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LITERARY STUDIES 



LITERARY STUDIES: 



A COLLECTION OF 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 



BY 



W. A. JONES 



VOL. I. 



3i ■« . * 



NEW YORK; 
EDWARD WALKER, 114 FULTON STREET. 

1847. 






ah, 




n. «UAl(!HKAH, nilN'IKU. )\2 FI'I.TON HTKEKT, N- Y. 



TO 



MY FATHER AND BEST FRIEND, 



IN ADMIRATION OK 



IIIM MANY NOBLK QUAMTIKl 



THESE VOLUMES 



ARK RKSPKCTFUM.Y DKDICATKP 



HIS SON. 



CONTENTS OF VOL. I 



PAGE 

I. NEW-OLD ESSAYS OF ADDISON AND STEELE, ... 1 

II. TYRONE POWER, 13 

III. A FEW HOMERIC NODS IN MR. HALLAM, .... 17 

IV. RELIGIOUS NOVELS, 22 

V. LITERARY AMBASSADORS, 31 

VI. THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS, 38 

VIl. THE MORALITY OF POVERTY, • . , 47 

VIII. CHAPTER ON SOME OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS, 56 

IX. JEREMY TAYLOR, THE SPENSER OF DIVINITY, ... 75 

X. CHURCH MUSIC, 81 

XI. MR. BRAHAM, 88 

XII. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL, . 91 

XIII. Walton's lives, 105 

XIV. ELIJAH FENTON, HI 

XV. SWEDENBORGIANISM, 119 

XVI. RELIGIOUS SATIRE, 130 



NEW-OLD ESSAYS 



ADDISON AND STEELE. 



It is not an unfrequent occurrence in the case of volumi- 
nous writers, that a proportional moiety of their productions 
become after a short period succeeding to their decease, lit- 
tle known : and in the progress of a century, or even a still 
briefer space of time, almost obsolete. After the enthusi- 
asm of party feeling, or the excitement of novelty has gra- 
dually cooled down into a sober appreciation of real merit, 
from a previous extravagant estimate of it — we begin to 
learn the true secret of excellence, to discriminate the pe- 
culiar and characteristic traits of the author and award him 
the palm which shall continue fresh and green in the eyes 
of posterity. Of many copious authors, how little is now 
generally read — a few versified translations, an ode, some 
satires, and a prose essay or two, with one playof Dryden ; 
only two or three, out of the score of volumes that complete 
the edition of Swift. Of Voltaire's three score, a few sa- 
tirical tales and historical compends : some two or three 
dialogues of Plato : the Essays and Advancement, of Bacon : 
the Essay of Locke : a play, here and there, of the Old 
Dramatists : an occasional sonnet of a writer of a volume of 
sonnets. .These are illustrations at hand: a very long 

1 



2 LITERARY STUDIES. 

list might be made of the very fertile authors who have 
. been popularly known as the writers of but one work of 
, pre-eminent ability. Bunyan, Defoe and Butler are strik- 
ing instances. For the gratification of personal amuse- 
ment, or the curious eye of the diligent antiquary, we 
might add a copious appendix of this sort, but such might 
not be so generally acceptable, as these occasional reflec- 
tions illustrated by fewer examples. 

The writers of the present century, this age of authors 
and books, will in all probability experience a very great 
diminution in the extent and character of their fame with 
the cominor ao;e. Countless volumes of fiction will soon be 
laid on the shelf for ever; whilst a class of writers, read by 
few and whose names have not yet gone abroad into gene- 
ral esteem, will, we venture to predict, become classical, 
not only or so much from the capacity of their genius, as 
from its direction to the permanently classical forms of writ- 
ing. Except Scott (a vast deal of whose writings, it has 
been confessed by more than one even cautious critic, can- 
not last) what novelist will gain in fame, as the Critic and 
Essayist Hazlitt ? We have had, for more than a century, 
no humorist like Lamb ; and Hunt treads closely upon the 
heels of Steele. Many authors too will become famous 
in spite of their elaborate attempts at avoiding fame : the 
squib, the pamphlet, the newspaper editorial, will throw in 
the shade, heavy Epics and dull histories ; a picturesque 
sketch of manners, a fresh and spirited portrait of charac- 
ter, true and genial criticism, speculations on life and the 
principles and motives of human actions ; these form the 
favorite reading of the best class of readers in all ages — 
and although the readers of Addison and Steele may, at 
the present day, comprise a small body, still they have 



ADDISON AND STEELE. 3 

admirers, and there are also readers and lovers of them who 
have succeeded them in the same form of composition. 
What style or range of speculation does it not embrace ? 
It is too didactic for the mass of readers, who, like children 
or ignorant people, must be entertained the same time they 
are taught : but for the scholar and philosopher it is inva- 
luable. From the prose lyric, a poetic confession, to the 
loftiest hymn of adoration, it is full of varied music ; and 
personal as it appears in its very essence, it may even be 
made dramatic. 

Myself a reader and writer of Essays, I must confess to 
a special fondness for the very name ; and I have contract- 
ed a feeling of affectionate interest for the essayist and cri- 
tic. As I run my eye over the shelves of my small collec- 
tion, I find few books it rests upon with such pleasure as 
upon the essayists, moral painters and historians of man- 
ners and fashions. There are Bacon and Temple, and 
Cowley, with the admirable writers whose names are pla- 
ced at the head of this paper. There too are Goldsmith 
and Shenstone and Mackenzie. Nor may I omit that trio 
of masterly essayists, Lamb and Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. 
Of the French, I especially cherish Rochefoucald and La- 
bruy^re — writers with more thinking in their maxims and 
sentences, than you find in whole pages of weaker writ- 
ers. Among quite recent instances, Carlyle and Macaulay 
in England ; Guizot and Cousin (though more scholastic 
than strictly belongs to general essayists) in France : and at 
home, Channing, Emerson, and Dewey. Indeed, the best 
writing of the present day is to be found in periodical lite- 
rature ; though we have lost much in pure classicality and 
in certain traits of the essay, that have become merged in 
other forms of writing. Thus, owing to the necessity of 



4 LITERARY STUDIES. 

rapid and copious production, inaccuracies are not so rare 
as they should be ; and evident marks of haste are to be 
found. The humorous painting of the Addisonian school 
has become the property of two or three capital novelists. 
We have nowadays no pictures of manners, merely in es- 
says ; and since Hazlitt, no prose satirist of decided abili- 
ty has arisen. The Lecturers and Reviewers occupy a 
large portion of the province formerly allotted to the Essay. 
Moral speculation and criticism ; analysis of character, 
historical painting, satirical description, the peculiar cha- 
racteristics of the Essay, have, for the most part, passed 
into other forms. Yet a taste for this sort of writing is re- 
tained bj^ a circle, which is rapidly widening, and in con- 
sequence the demand is as evidently increased for more 
of literature, of the pleasantest kind — for something brief, 
pointed and pithy — something of a practical bearing, and 
yet which is to be considered as valuable in a purely lite- 
rary estimate of the matter. 

A kind of Literature is needed for the busy man and the 
o;entleman, as well as for the recluse scholar ; a tone of 
fresh vigor, real knowledge of life, wide and original expe- 
rience is requisite. The authors of this must be men, 
scholars, and gentlemen. It is not by any means the most 
ambitious department of authorship, but, perhaps, next to 
fine poetry, it is the most stable ; the staple is life and 
books : feeling and passion ; without inclining to system or 
method, it is grave and philosophical : without descending to 
tarce or burlesque, it admits of pleasantry and good-natur- 
ed ridicule. It is not exact or mechanical science, but the 
science of human nature and the art of criticism (not of books 
and authors only but) of principles, and theories, and fa- 
shions, and contemporary manners. It is strictly histori- 



ADDISON AND STEELE. O, 

cal, though it contains little narrative, for it points out the 
sources of historical truth. It is experimental philosophy, 
though without any settled rules of art. In brief, it is the 
kind of writing most particularly addressed to all, who, 
while they read, think and feel ; and not to those who 
read to accumulate and display knowledge. 

Addison and Steele have been more fortunate than most 
writers of magazines, not only as they are among the best 
as they were among the earliest. Priority is, in fact, as 
important a thing in Literature, as precedence is thought 
to be in life. The first writers are generally the best ; at 
all events they are freshest and most original. In point 
of delicate humor, Addison is unsurpassed, though his se- 
rious writing, which is sometimes almost tame, has been 
equalled. Steele is more unique : such naturalness, so 
easy and uniform a style, a vein of sentiment so fresh 
and manly, such charming pleasantry, such elegance of 
compliment and heartiness at the same time, we find in no 
one other essayist. Not a few periodical writers might be 
mentioned, more brilliant, more ingenious, with greater 
learning and capacity, more profound, more exact, yet none 
who are so delightful as Steele is invariably. Happy on 
any topic, he is perfectly delicious where he is most at 
home, and writes from his heart. The greater fame of 
Addison has arisen in part from higher pretensions and as 
much from the serious nature of his moral essays. Addi- 
son, too, aimed more at being the censor ; Steele was con- 
tent with the reputation of sociality, and to be loved rather 
than be admired. Addison was perhaps a more cultivated 
man, yet Steele had wit and spirit, that needed slight aids 
from scholarship — yet he would, at the present day, be call- 
ed a scholar. Steele had less art and policy than his as- 



t) LITERARY STUDIES. 

sociate, was more open and credulous, a generous dupe, 
though deceived by no lack of sense, but of stratagem. 
Addison was author all over ; Steele was more of the man 
than of the writer. Both were admirable in their respec- 
tive manners — Addison's elegance and humor gave an ad- 
ditional beauty to the subjects fullest of it, naturally ; while 
Steele's fine sense and airy style played with easy grace 
upon the most barren theme. 

Besides the Spectator, Tattler and Guardian, Addison was 
concerned in other periodical publications. He was not 
only the creator of Sir Roger de Coverly, the satirist of the 
beau-monde, the elegant sermonizer, the tasteful critic ; 
but also, the warm partizan and leading political writer. 
" The Freeholder " was a strong whig paper, edited and 
conducted by Addison, who furnished all the papers, under 
that title, which are collected into a single volume. It 
consists of fifty-five essays, and was commenced in the 
year '15, celebrated for the first rising in favor of the Pre- 
tender — and is filled with arguments in favor of the House 
of Hanover, the Protestant succession, and a number of 
elegant artifices (compliments garnished with eloquent flat- 
tery) to bring in the fair portion of the inhabitants of Great 
Britain to the side of the existing government. These 
papers are the best of the series — as a specimen of the 
work we make the following extracts from it, and which 
are in the Freeholder's happiest vein. They are tran- 
scribed from the fourth number, entitled, " P.easons why the 
British Ladies should side with the Freeholder :" " It is 
with great satisfaction I observe that the women of our 
island, who are the most eminent for virtue and good sense, 
are in the interest of the present government. As the fair 
sex very much recommend the cause they are engaged in. 



ADDISON AND STEELE. 7 

it would be no small misfortune to a sovereign, though he 
had all the male part of a kingdom on his side, if he did 
not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his sub- 
jects. Ladies are always of great use to the party they 
espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. 

" Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, 
make at best the third part of the sensible men of the Bri- 
tish nation ; and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in 
all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn 
sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his 
mistress. By this means it Jies in the power of every fine 
woman to secure at least half a dozen able-bodied men to 
his majesty's service. The female world are likewise in- 
dispensably necessary in the best cause, to manage the 
controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable 
breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a 
pretty mouth are unanswerable. There are many reasons 
why the women of Great Britain should be on the side of 
the Freeholder, and enemies to the person who would bring 
in arbitrary government and Popery. As there are several 
of our ladies who amuse themselves in the reading of tra- 
vels, they cannot but take notice what uncomfortable lives 
those of their own sex lead where passive obedience is pro- 
fessed and practised in its utmost perfection. In those 
countries the men have no property but in their wives, who 
are the slaves to slaves ; every married woman being sub- 
ject to a domestic tyrant who requires from her the same 
vassalage that he pays to his sultan. If the ladies would 
seriously consider the evil consequences of arbitrary power, 
they would find that it spoils the shape of the foot in China, 
where the barbarous politics of the men so diminish the 
basis of the human figure, as to unqualify a woman for an 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



evening walk or a country dance. In the East Indies, a 
widow who has any regard to her character throws herself 
into the flames of her husband's funeral pile, to show, for- 
sooth, that she is faithful and loyal to the memory of her 
deceased lord. In Persia, the daughters of Eve, as they 
call them, are reckoned in the inventory of their goods and 
chattels : and it is a usual thing when a man sells a bale of 
silk, or a drove of camels, to toss half a dozen women into 
the bargain. Through all the dominions of the great Turk, 
a woman thinks herself happy if she can but get the twelfth 
share of a husband, and is thought to be of no use in the 
creation, but to keep up a proper number of slaves for the 
Commander of the Faithful. I need not set forth the ill- 
usage which the fair ones meet with in those despotic go- 
vernments that lie nearer to us. Every one hath heard of 
the several ways of locking up women in Spain and Italy; 
where, if there is any power lodged in any of the sex, it is 
not among the young and the beautiful, whom nature seems 
to have formed for it, but among the old and withered 
matrons, known by the frightful names of Gouvernantes 
and Duennas. If any should allege the freedoms indulged 
to the French ladies, he must own that these are owing to 
the natural gallantry of the people, not to their form of go- 
vernment, which excludes by its very constitution every 
female from power, as naturally unfit to hold the sceptre of 
that kingdom. Women ought in reason to be no less averse 
to Popery than to arbitrary power. Some merry authors 
have pretended to demonstrate, that the Roman Catholic re- 
ligion could never spread in a nation where women would 
have more modesty than to expose their innocent liberties 
to a confessor. Others of the same turn have assured us 
that the fine British complexion, which is so peculiar to our 



ADDISON AND STEELE. 9 

ladies, would suffer very much from a fish diet ; and that 
a whole Lent would give such a sallowness to the celebrated 
beauties of this island as would scarce make them distin- 
guishable from those of France. I shall only leave to the 
serious consideration of my fair countrywomen, the danger 
any of them might have been in (had Popery been our na- 
tional religion) of being forced by their relations to a state 
of perpetual virginity. The most blooming toast in the 
island might have been a nun ; and many a lady who is 
now a mother of fine children, condemned to a condi- 
tion of life disagreeable to herself, and unprofitable to the 
world. To this I might add the melancholy objects 
they would be daily entertained with, of several sightly 
men delivered over to an unavoidable celibacy. Let a 
young lady imagine to herself the brisk embroidered offi- 
cer, who now makes love to her with so agreeable an air, 
converted into a monk ; or the beau, who now addresses 
himself to her in a full-bottomed wig, distinguished by a 
little baldpate covered with a little leather black scull-cap. 
I forbear to mention many other objections, which the ladies, 
who are no strangers to the doctrines of Popery, will easily 
recollect ; though I do not in the least doubt but those I 
have already suggested will be sufficient to persuade my 
fair readers to be zealous in the Protestant cai^se." We 
read no such political writing at the present day ; elegance 
of style is considered as quite a subordinate matter, and 
pleasantry rarely passes from a paragraph into an article. 
The Lover, of Steele, is concerned with the policy of 
Passion, and the strategy of Love. It is a work of senti- 
ment, and peculiarly a lady's journal. The passion of 
Love in all its multiplied forms ; the affections of the heart 
with all their subtle windings j the various aspects of 

1* 



10 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



friendship, are painted with masterly skill. Tales of real 
life, and characters so natural as to seem almost living, 
occupy a large space, with a rich fund of sense and unpre- 
tending sincerity of feeling. The purest sentiment, a facile 
wit, and polished gallantry, are its marked features. The 
Lover is an avowed imitation of the Tattler, which is a 
surety for the style of its author. Like that delightful 
collection, it contains its club, and had letters written to its 
author, Marmaduke Myrtle, gent. Thoroughly acquainted 
with city life, and the ways of the town, the book is full of 
good advice of the kind most needed in a great city. It is, 
besides this, a chart of the shoals and quicksands of the 
tender passion, that should be studied by all youthful navi- 
gators. Beyond this, it has the additional attraction of de- 
lightful illustrative matter, incidental to the main design. 
It contains many admirable suggestions of the highest 
practical value, and delicate satire, with jfine irony une- 
qualled but in the pages of his friend and associate. Of 
these various fine qualities we shall endeavor to present 
examples, though necessarily brief and few. Here is the 
portrait of a Lover Vagabond, as he calls the representa- 
tion of a certain class of speculative rakes. " He has the 
language, the air, the tender glance ; he can hang upon a 
look, has most exactly the veneration of face when he is 
catched ogling one whose pardon he would beg for gazing ; 
he has the exultation at leading off a lady to her coach ; 
can let drop an indifferent thing, or call her servants with 
a loudness and a certain gay insolence rare enough ; nay, 
he will hold her hand too fast for a man that leads her, and 
is indifferent to her, and yet come to that gripe with such 
slow degrees, that she cannot say he squeezed her hand, 
but for anything further he had no inclination.'' We wish 



ADDISON AND STEELE. 11 

we could find room for certain delicious papers, that would 
be mutilated by mere extracts. Such are, the Battle of 
Eyes ; the Lover, containing the tragical history of Pen- 
ruddock, with the affecting correspondence that passed 
between the husband and his wife ; the story of the Vene- 
tian Count ; the humorous family picture of the Crabtrees ; 
the refined thoughts on making presents ; the account of 
the Ladies of^ consideration ; and of the young student who 
was so artfully taught to speak and act for himself; and a 
number of elegant episodes. Instead of these we can only 
copy a passage or so, at random — generally selecting such 
as Labruyere might have written, from their nicety and 
refinement ; and maxims with regard to good breeding, as 
judicious as anything in Chesterfield, at the same time 
that they have ten-fold the heart in them. 

" Women dissemble their passions better than men, but 
men suhdue their passions better than women." 

" There are no inclinations in women which more sur- 
prise me than their passions for chalk and china. The 
first of these maladies wears out in a little time; but when 
a woman is visited with the second, it generally takes pos- 
session of her for life. China vessels are playthings for 
women of all ages. An old lady of four score shall be as 
busy in cleaning an Indian Mandarin as her great-grand- 
daughter is in dressing her baby." 

" A too great regard for doing what you are about with 
a good grace, destroys your capacity for doing it at all." 

" The best way to do a thing as you ought, is to do it 
only because you ought." 

" As for my own part, I always approve those who 
make the most of a little understanding, and carry that as 
far as they can, than those who will not condescend to be 



12 LITERARY STUDIES. 

perfect, if I may so speak, in the vndcr parts of their cha- 
racter." 

" ugly is a woman's word for knavish.'"' 

*' Some silly particle or other, as it were to tack the 
taking leave with the rest of the discourse, is a common 
error of young men of good educaticn." 

" A good judgment will not only supply, but go beyond 
experience ; for the latter is only a knowledge that directs 
us in the dispatch of matters future, from the consideration 
of matters past of the same nature ; but the former is a 
perpetual and equal direction in everything that can hap- 
pen, and does not follow, but makes the precedent that 
guides the other." 

The reader will do well to turn to the beautiful dedica- 
tion to the Lover, a masterpiece of composition, as well as 
a noble eflusion of friendship : the whole work is of the 
same texture, and so uniformly attractive as to appear 
more to advantage read continuously, than cut up into 
shreds and patches ; a test to be applied only to works of 
standard merit, since most modern writers gain by the 
transcription of their most elaborate passages. 



II 



TYRONE power; 



Is certainly the prince of Irish actors. Indeed we never 
saw the Irishman even decently personated before we saw 
this admirable performer, nor do we conceive it possible 
for any future rival to disturb our opinion of him. Irish 
Johnstone is with the past : he may have equalled Power, 
but we doubt it — we are sure he could not have surpassed 
him. Power, beyond any actor we ever saw, and we have 
seen the best that have graced the boards of our old Drury, 
unites in himself the most literal fidelity with the richest 
humor this side of burlesque. He is always natural ; he 
is the most picturesque of actors. The elder Mathews had 
far finer wit, knowledge of character and invention ; his 
son a more sparkling fancy, wonderful quickness, and a 
keener wit. Jack Reeve was John Bull in grotesque, and 
Keeley is nature's self in little. In quiet humor, the last 
mentioned actor beats them all. Dowton, whom we saw 
in his decline, was a serious old gentleman of the senti- 
mental school. Charles Kemble was the perfection of the 
genteel comedian. All of these performers were gifted 
with a universality to which Power can lay no claim, and 
yet we reiterate, in his single walk of Irishman, whether 
gentle or simple, the attorney or the tailor, the country 

* 1840. 



14 LITERARY STUDIES. 

gentleman or the rustic, the ambassador or the valet, he is 
the finest, most natural, most attractive actor the stage now 
possesses. 

When we first sat down to sketch the character of 
Power's acting, we thought to compare him with Keeley ; 
a close analysis gives Power the palm. We say this with 
a genuine relish of the delicious quaintness, grave humor 
of Peter Spyk and Euclid Facile : both actors are men of 
excellent sense, but their humor and fancy are different. 
Powers is a Rubens in his rich colors, and Keeley a Te- 
niers in his scrupulous exactness. Keeley is a Flemish 
painter among actors ; cautious, thorough, elaborate. The 
effect of his acting proves this, though it may not be dis- 
covered while he is acting ; he leaves a clear, fixed 
impression on the mind. This Power does not aim to 
create, or cannot ; he is more the actor of impulse, not 
without study. He has too much nicety and neatness for 
that : what we mean is, there is more of a riant spirit, an 
overflow of soul in his acting than in Keeley's, which 
might almost tempt one to say he was a careless actor, 
Keeley, on the contrary, is the most careful of actors, and 
gradually unfolds a character; Power displays it in the 
first scene. Both are admirable actors, with quite opposite 
temperaments ; and the most we can say is, that the breadth 
of Power's humor is of a more sympathetic nature than 
the depth of Keeley's. 

An undoubted proof of the genius of Power, for such he 
certainly possesses, is his constant freshness. Acting in a 
single line, one might regard him as liable to monotony, 
and that line comprehending but two ranges of character, 
diversify them as you will. New incidents, a new story, 
new characters may come in, but in every varying light, 



TYRONE POWER. 15 

you can find only either the Irish gentleman, or the Irish 
peasant; most delicately shaded, most nicely discrimi- 
nated, yet only these two. It has been disputed whether 
Power can act the Irish gentleman ; there is no doubt he 
is one. It is said, he carries into a genteel character the 
farcical conceits and low cunning that distinguish his Rory 
O'More, his Irish Lion, Teddy the Tiler, Looney M'Twol- 
ter, and Dr. O'Toole. We wish such critics to go and 
see his Irish Attorney. If that be not a portrait of the 
Irish gentleman of a past date, a harum-scarum rattlepate, 
but a genuine, humane-hearted gentleman withal, a man 
of sense to boot, then we know not what such a character 
should be. When Power chooses, he can assume 
the port and bearing of a finished gentleman. He 
always discovers the feelings of one. In this last-men- 
tioned character, he is the exact picture of a country gen- 
tleman, who has lived much among his inferiors, and 
caught something of their slang and style. His Irish Am- 
bassador is not so good. In O'Callaghan again we see the 
gentleman plainly, though clad in a rusty suit and worn 
beaver. His Sir Lucius O'Trigger we never saw ; but 
the Park company could not sustain such a comedy as the 
Rivals. Where would be the Acres, Sir Anthony, the 
Captain Absolute, the Lydia Languish ? To be sure we 
would have the best of Mrs. Malaprops, in Mrs. Wheatley. 
We would have a judicious actor in Mr. Chippendale, 
whatever part he assumed ; and a tolerable one in Placide, 
whose powers have been far overstated. But we want 
Charles Kemble, Jack Reeve, Farren, and Mrs. Jordan, or 
Miss Chester, or Miss Kelly, if the play were to be cast as 
it deserved. 

Excellent as is Mr. Power's Irish gentleman, his peasant 



16 LITERARY STUDIES. 

must be confessed beyond all praise : it is perfection. In 
the White Horse of the Peppers, he leaves for a time his 
original character, which is that of an Irish cavalier, and 
assumes that of a bog-trotter. The vast difference is seen 
at once. If he were good in the first, and such he cer- 
tainly was, he was excellent in the last. 

Another proof of Mr. Power's merit is, that he is the piece. 
In all the plays he performs, his character is not only the 
main character, but the only character of importance ; and 
yet he so fills up the stage and the play, that he makes 
poor actors play well in his company. Other stars shine 
by themselves alone ; Power shines in his own person, and 
through the rest of the company by a reflected light. In 
a word. Power is the herald of mirth and good humor 
wherever he comes ; we greet his honest face with joy on 
the stage, or in the street, and cannot help regarding him 
as a much greater and better friend to humanity than a 
score of professed moralizers who never touch the heart. 



Ill 



A FEW HOMERIC NODS IN MR. HALLAM. 



Histories of literature in general prove very unsatisfac- 
tory. The ground they cover is too wide ; the topics dis- 
cussed too multifarious ; the space for each very limited. 
There is more of the narrative talent employed in them 
generally than critical acumen. A historical line of 
writers is deduced, and the genealogy of the various 
schools of literature and the mutations of taste and fashion 
are presented ; but the individual traits of single writers, 
unless those of the first class, are too often overlooked, and 
the rare merits of minor writings, which are in less regard 
because less known, cast almost entirely in the shade, 
or else unfaithfully noticed. This general fault applies to 
the three most prominent histories of literature with which 
the modern scholar is acquainted — the work of Schlegel, 
Sismondi, and Bouterwek. The late Introduction to the 
literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, by Mr. Hallam, is open to the same ob- 
jections, and, if we are not greatly mistaken, to a wider 
and more prejudicial extent. 

The capacity and requisite attainments on the part of a 
historian of European letters, would, if rigorously tested in 
the person of Mr. Hallam, incline one to place his preten- 



18 LITERARY STUDIES. 

sions and to rate his pertorniance rather lower tlian the 
press and the reading public generally have thought proper 
to ascribe to him. The true position of this author in the 
literary republic, has been well detined by Macaulay, as 
that of a most liberal, fair and accurate political historian. 
But it will be readily seen that the very qualities that best 
fit Hallam for this department, are the least appropriate to 
him in his new character. The cool decisions and rigidly 
impartial statements of the narrator of civil and military 
occurrences, and of the speculatist on the political aspects 
of states and nations, diminish the influence of a literary 
spirit cherished with enthusiasm and kept fresh by a natu- 
ral and healthy sympathy with men of genius. Hence we 
find the statesman and political economist has here got the 
better of the literary critic and the genuine man of lettei*s. 
Mr. Hallam is a man of varied acquirements, much indus- 
try, and a correct judgment on points where lie is well 
versed ; but his work is, after all, little better than a cata- 
ii)gue raisoiuU, and in that section of it most interesting to 
the English reader — the department of old English prose 
and jx>eiry — lamentably deficient, not only in a just ap- 
preciation of the glories of the reigns o{ Elizabeth, of 
James, and of Charles I., but also in some of the common 
details with which every gentleman of moderate reading is 
supjx)sed to be acquainted. All questions of speculative 
theology and theoretical politics, the antiquarian historj- of 
the fii'st editions of the classics, and the eaily translations 
of the Bible, the pmgress of oriental learning, and similar 
heads, are well and learnedly handled. The great defect 
of the writer is seen when he comes to speak of the minor 
prose literature of England in tlie sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries, and where those recondite niceties and 



A FEW HOMERIC NODS IN MR. HALLAM. 19 

delicate traits that test the fine critic, pass either without 
observation or are ignorantly and ahiiost insolently treated. 
A feeling of the beauties of an obscure author of merit is 
as rare in the world of books, as the honest appreciation of 
a worthy man, who lives out of the world, and is, perhaps, 
underrated by the few to whom he is known, is in the 
circles of society. Not only candor but also ingenuity is 
wanted, in a critic of this description. The critic has 
candor, but is by no means an ingenious man in any of his 
works, and, we apprehend, not so well informed on these 
very topics as he ought to be. On this latter suggestion 
alone can we account for several false reports and very 
inadequate decisions. We have marked many instances, 
but shall at present quote but a few. 

Mr. Hallam writes thus of Jeremy Taylor : " His sen- 
tences are of endless length, and hence not only altogether 
unmusical, but not always reducible to grammar." Of 
Donne and Cowley, he gives the old Johnsonian criticism, 
which has been amply refuted over and over again. He 
speaks of South as he is currently mentioned, merely a 
witty court preacher, and says not a word of his vigorous 
eloquence. Of Hammond's biblical annotations he treats 
at length, but adds not a syllable of the sermons of the 
English Fenelon. Of Marvell, says Hallam — " His satires 
are gross and stupid ;^^ (!) while the critic writes this sen- 
tence of Crashaw, "It is dilHcult in general to find any- 
thing in Crashaw that bad taste has not deformed"(!!) 
Among the Shaksperian commentators he mentions Mrs. 
Montague, and others inferior even to her, but omits alto- 
gether any reference to Hazlitt or Lamb. One of the 
most flagrant instances of a want of proper reverence for 
the finest writers of the finest period of English literature, 



20 LITERARY STUDIES. 

is to bo seen in his notice of tlie Mermaid tavern: "the 
oldest and not tlie worst of clubs." The circle in which 
Mr. ITallani moves is perhaps more courtly and aristocra- 
tical. His idol, Mr. Hookham Frere, possesses ''admira- 
ble liumor," but poor Owen Feltham, forsooth, who wrote 
the first century of his Resolves at the age of eighteen, and 
lived the life of a dependant, is a harsh and quaint writer, 
full of sententious commonplaces. This young man, who 
was also poor, oflers a striking example of an early matu- 
rity of judgment, and of the union of genuine pathos and 
fanciful humor. His little volume will be read with grati- 
fication a century hence, and by a larger class than now 
peruse it, and we dare atVirm with more pleasure than the 
long and inaccurate volumes of Hallam. 

Mr. Ilallam's judgments, often assuredly caught from 
second sources, are, when original, those of a critic with 
the taste of Dr. Blair ; a strange union of French criticism 
and reverence for classic models current in the early part 
and until almost the close of the last century. He gives 
an opinion of Addison, to which no reader of varied acqui- 
sition, or of broad views of the present day, could by any 
possibility assent. After Lamb and Hazlitt's admirable 
criticisms, we cannot read with patience the labored cau- 
tiousness of Mr. Hallam, on tlie old English dramatists. 
Our author's notices of the old divines are too much a 
history of their polemical works, and the views of their 
pulpit eloquence either borrowed or else confused. 

Lest the popular admiration for genius of the popular sort 
should run wild, he sneeringly alludes to a certain class 
of critics, who would erect the John Bunyans and Daniel 
Defoes into the gods of an idolatry. The historian would 
himself peradventure substitute Dr. Lingard and Sharon 



A FEW HOMERIC NODS IN MR. HALLAM. 21 

Turner, his brother historians, or a pair of biblical critics, 
or High Dutch commentators. There are critics who 
measure an author^s works by the company he keeps, or 
the clothes he wears. We suspect Mr. Hallam to be one 
of tiiem, who would treat Sir Harris Nicholas or the head 
of a college with unfeigned respect, but not allow himself 
to be ensnared into the vulgar society at Lamb's Wednes- 
day evening parties, where Coleridge, Wordsworth, Haz- 
litt, Godwin, Hunt, and a host of the most brilliant men of 
the age, met to converse freely, like men, and not like litte- 
rateurs or namby-pamby followers of noble lords. 

The history of English literature alone is much too 
comprehensive a subject for any one man. Mr. D'lsraeli, 
who advertised his intention of attempting it, lias been 
wisely disappointed. The curiosities of literature he has 
a more real love of, than for the simple beauties of prose 
or poetry. He might have compiled merely a collection 
of rare facts and curious fragments, valuable for their sug- 
gestive matter to the student, but quite inadequate for a phi- 
losophical history of literature. The best criticisms are 
contained in classic lives, in letters, and the ablest review 
articles, in the lectures of Hazlitt, and the essays of Lamb 
and Leigh Hunt. With these writers Mr. Hallam may in 
nowise compete, and we trust he will follow the bent of 
liis natural inclinations, in turning over state papers and 
government documents, and display his peculiar ability in 
sifting the measures of a party, and following up the con- 
sequences of a bill or a statute. For literary criticism, his 
cold temperament and negative taste are ill adapted. They 
incline him to look on the frank relation of an author's 
feelings as offensive egotism, and wholly obscure his per- 
ception of characteristic individuality or marked personal 
traits. 



IV. 
RELIGIOUS NOVELS 



A CERTAIN class of prosc fictions is included under the 
above general term, which, from Bunyan to Brownson, is 
and ever has been exceedingly popular. They are, for 
this reason, to be closely scrutinized, as their scope and 
tendency may prove productive either of jjreat good or con- 
siderable injury, not only to the cause of literature, but 
even to the cause of vital religion and Christian morality. 
Tile phrase, " Religious Novels," comprehends equally 
those works written professedly to favor or satirize particu- 
lar sects and creeds, and tiiose works wliich, with a more 
general and popular interest, still aim to take a high stand 
on all questions of morality, and to be, in eflect, text-books 
of ethics and political casuistry. 

A general objection that strikes us at once, on the very 
face of the matter, is with regard to the intention and spirit 
of these and similar productions. Is a novel, we would 
ask, the proper vehicle for religious sentiment and moral 
instruction ? We would not be misunderstood. We sin- 
cerely believe that every good book, even of the lightest 
character, should carry its moral with it, and that a good 
moral. What we doubt is, whether the morality of the 
book should be made offensively prominent, — should stand 
foremost, casting all its other merits into the background ; 



RELIGIOUS NOVELS. 23 

or whether it should not lie covert and unpretendingly 
under a cheerful face of humble docility. Pope has 
wisely advised us that 

" Men should be taught as if we taught them not; 
And things unknown, d.s things /or^g-o/"." 

The skilful man of the world — the Sir Politic Would-be 
of this generation, — always reminds and never informs 
directly. " The agreeable man is he who agrees." So 
the judicious moralist, if at the same time a writer of fic- 
tion, conceals his moral under a veil of fancy's weaving, 
and impresses a solemn truth on our hearts, whilst he is 
delighting the imagination or instructing the reason. This 
palpable error of overdoing the matter, being " too moral 
by half" (always smacking of hypocrisy), has been re- 
marked by the ablest critical and sesthetical philosophers ; 
but it is a vulgar error of such frequent occurrence as to 
call for as frequent animadversion. It is not necessary 
that every book should contain a confession of faith, nor 
comprehend a code of religious precepts. Every biogra- 
phy is not of a good man ; some histories must relate the 
successes of bad men and evil principles. Novels, of all 
books, are permitted to be least didactic and hortatory (to 
employ a Johnsonian phrase). We hate misnomers. A 
book of devotion, a tract of controversial divinity, a sermon, 
a moral essay, are all well in their proper place ; but a book 
professing to be a novel, but which is, in fact, a sham novel, 
a mere cover for the introduction of a work of another 
class, under its name, is a forgery, a falsehood, a contempti- 
ble piece of deception. The title may be assumed to gain 
a wider circle of readers (it may be a fetch of the author's, 
or a trick of the publisher's), but that affords no just excuse 



24 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



for falsifying its character by giving it a name that means 
something directly the reverse. Lord Peter, in the Tale 
of the Tub, endeavored to make a loaf of bread to stand for 
" fish, flesh and fowl," but such is now a stale cheat. It 
is for bread, giving a stone, in the language of Scripture. 
It is virtually telling a falsehood. No honest man could 
countenance such an imposition, evidently a piece of Jesuit- 
ical policy. The defender of the practice would argue, 
probably, the purity of his intention and the goodness of 
the end to be reached : for " a verse may take him whom 
a sermon flies;" shielding himself under these batteries 
from the charge of employing unfair means. 

We have a word more to say on this head. We urge, 
a novel is not, as a matter of course, to be a moral treatise 
or ecclesiastical Iiorn-book (all good works of fiction pre- 
suppose the essentials of religion and the reality of vir- 
tue) ; but, — and here we join with the strictest religionists, 
— if it pretend directly to icaclt morals or religion at all, 
it must teach pure doctrine and sound ethics. It is essen- 
tial, primarily, that it be consistent with itself and faithful 
to nature. Let an exact picture of life, and manners, and 
character be presented, without any formal comment or 
prefatory analysis ; give character, and feeling, and prin- 
ciple fair play ; let opposites contend,* and then good will 
be apparent, evil will be manifest. Allurements will be 
offered to virtue, and vice be her own corrector. No dan- 
ger need be apprehended from too close fidelity of descrip- 
tion, for in that case the evil will correct itself. Grossness 
is repulsive enough ; it is the elegant voluptuousness of 
polished vice that is so baleful and pernicious. By all 
means to be avoided is the hateful paradox of painting 
good infidels, or cold skeptics with all the virtues of huma- 



RELIGIOUS NOVELS. 25 

nity. And some who pass for mere skeptics, have a 
natural religion and a pious benevolence in their hearts, 
which they do not dream of, and do not profess. Such 
was " the good David" (Hume), the friend and almost the 
idol of Adam Smith, and Macintosh, and Mackenzie. 

We have mentioned two classes of religious novels. 
Under the first denomination would fall Bunyan's Pilgrim 
and Holy War, Patrick's Imitation (taken by Gray as a 
standard of dulness), the Spiritual Quixote, Walker's Vag- 
abond, Coelebs in Search of a Wife, and later fictions of a 
somewhat similar character by De Wette and Brownson. 
These are but a few. Of the second description are the 
novels of Defoe, Richardson, Dr. Moore, Johnson's Rasse- 
las, and a vast collection of moral tales, by Marmontel, and 
Cottin, and De Genlis, and Chateaubriand, and St. Pierre, 
with a thousand others. 

A striking defect is common to the above works, and the 
religious biographies, — the heroes are made perfect ; they 
are morally and intellectually accomplished, and unite the 
piety of the saint to the polish of the gentleman. They are 
literally "just men, that need no repentance." Instead of 
being represented as human and fallible, they are painted as 
so pure and immaculate as to preclude us from sympathy 
with weakness or failure, and have nothing left for the mind 
but stupid admiration. We are called by the creator of 
these models of superhuman excellence to fall down and do 
homage to the idols of their fancy, the gods of their idolatry, 
as to our liege exemplars. The characters themselves, by 
their monotony of merit, into which no particle of folly is 
allowed to intrude, are made tiresome and unnatural. 
They are flattered into the most disgusting form of vanity, 
— that is, spiritual conceit. They are moral and religious 

2 



LITERARY STUDIES. 

coxcombs. " It is the man, Sir Charles Grandison," is the 
constant exclamation of praise. The morality of these 
novels is moral jpedantry . It is as different from true moral 
wisdom as genuine learning is different from the pedant- 
ry of books and colleges. The morality of ethical novels 
is generally a conventional mannerism : the pretensions to 
piety savor of puritanical assumption. The religious con- 
versations are often blasphemous, from their absurd and 
presumptuous familiarity. We read a sort of religious 
SLANG, too often found even in the pulpit ; by which we 
intend to express, a stereotyped repetition of phrases, em- 
ployed without any definite meaning, and in an indifferent, 
careless spirit. The most serious Christian cannot avoid 
allowing the existence of cant, which is more injurious in 
religion than anywhere else. In religious novels, any ex- 
pression of this kind exposes the work to the sneers of wick- 
ed men, as well as to the intelligent censure of the critic, 
who is no scoffer. 

One description of religious novels, that might be better 
styled moral satires, if not carried out into burlesque or 
disfigured by illiberality, may be the vehicle of sound ar- 
gument and pointed rebuke. The Vagabond, by Walker, 
is a book of this nature. Such, also, we conceive the Spir- 
itual Quixote to be ; a satire directed against the Methodists 
and their extravagances. 

Bunyan, the first of religious writers, was an allegorical 
painter with little of the satirist. He has nothing in com- 
mon, as a mere writer, with later writers of religious fic- 
tion, — Hannah More, for instance. Pilgrim's Progress is 
dramatic and spiritual ; Coelebs is a tract on the art of se- 
lecting a wife, transformed into the shape, the figure " ex- 
tern," of a novel. Bunyan gives us pictures ; Hannah 



RELIGIOUS NOVELS. 27 

More furnishes us with sermons and moral dissertations. 
Bunyan is a poet ; Mrs. More is a proser. Hannah More's 
true field — and there she was admirable — (for, in spite of 
many drawbacks, she had great talent), was, prose fiction 
in the shape of moral tracts (good Sunday reading) for the 
plainer class of people, and which would impress many 
wholesome truths on readers of all classes. She was also a 
good writer for children beyond infancy and on the confines 
of boyhood or girlhood. She wanted genius to open the 
minds and address the fancy of very young children ; and 
she wanted breadth and originality for maturer men and 
women of education and experience. 

We come, finally, to this conclusion, with regard to the 
morality of the novel as a work of art ; and we find our 
idea so justly and distinctly enunciated by Hazlitt,* that 
we borrow his language : " The most moral writers, after 
all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral. 
The professed moralist unavoidably degenerates into the 
partizan of a system ; and the philosopher is too apt to 
warp the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of 
manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to 
draw the inference ; if we are not able to do this, or do it 
ill, at least it is our own fault." In the same way, a phi- 
losophic historian will prefer the transcript from contem- 
porary records to any fine-spun dissertations of his own ; 
and an effective orator will allow a clear and spirited 
statement of facts to do the work of a labored declamation. 
There have been warm discussions on this point, to wit, 
whether every work of art should have a direct moral ? 
Goethe and his disciples contended that it should not; 
that, questionless, a deep lesson was to be learnt, not ap- 
• Lectures on the Comic Writers. 



28 LITERARY STUDIES. 

pearing, however, on the surface of the work, but to be 
educed and evolved after study and earnest meditation. 
Coleridge boasted that a principal beauty of his " Ancient 
Mariner" consisted in its being without an avowed moral, 
at which good Mistress Barbauld was mightily shocked. 
Not having a formal moral, did not impair the essential 
morality of the poem. This speech of the poet was analo- 
gous to his praise of Shakspeare's women, that they were 
characterless ; recipients of virtue, and reflectors of it, but 
not stiff, moral, heartless prudes. The great poet de- 
tested pretence, and most of all moral pretences. He saw 
a great and deep truth, which the mass can never compre- 
hend, or, if they did, could not appreciate, and which must 
ever remain a dark problem to many well-meaning and 
well-taught (in other respects), but pragmatical persons. 
For a man can only see with what eyes he has, and with 
none other. Optical aids furnish optical delusions ; and 
thus truth is perverted, because the percipient wants a true 
vision. 

The novel is a classic form of composition ; it has proved 
the vehicle for consummate knowledge of life and charac- 
ter ; it comprehends and includes exquisite descriptions of 
nature, and beauty, and comic traits, and pathetic situa- 
tions ; it paints the manners, and developes the sentiments. 
It is familiar history and popular philosophy ; but we 
apprehend it is not the proper form of writing to be selected 
for the propagation of religious opinions, or the instilling, 
in a didactic manner, of moral sentiments. We would be 
very far from excluding either ; but we maintain that they 
should be subsidiary rather than glaring ; incidental and 
not prominent. Palpable display only invites attack, and 
stimulates rude jests. 



RELIGIOUS NOVELS. 29 

With all the love in the world for good litel-ature, and 
none the less for novels of the good old stamp, as a portion 
of literature, we yet confess religion is too holy a thing to 
be bandied about in lively dialogue, or defended with the 
supercilious condescension of arrogant eloquence. Other 
forms of composition are better adapted to impress moral 
precepts, or warm by pure devotion, or excite by passion- 
ate appeals, or enlighten by the inductions of reason. The 
divine muse of sacred poesy is reviving from the lethargy 
in which she lay buried for the greater part of the eight- 
eenth century. The rich strains of the minor religious 
poets of the seventeenth century are now reproduced, and 
rising from a new choir of contemporary bards. The songs of 
Zion fascinate the sense, while they purify the heart. The 
well of life requires no such filtering as the poisoned foun- 
tain of Helicon, to drink only of the pure essence of poesy. 
The pulpit is more especially the source whence should 
flow invigorating streams of the water of the River of Life, 
to cheer and fortify the soul. That these ends are not in 
all cases so answered, is a crying evil. The history of 
good men, who have actually lived and struggled with 
temptation and fortune, if truly and dramatically related, 
should at least equal a fictitious narrative of the ideal good 
man. The history of the church is a history of human 
nature, and full of rich instruction. For direct precept or 
discussion, the moral essay, the I'eview, the religious peri- 
odical, are always open. Aud it is indeed matter of espe- 
cial wonder how, with«lhe rich theological literature of 
England, any poverty should be felt of religious reading 
for the most fastidious scholar ; or the necessity of resort 
to novels for doctrinal or practical instruction. Perhaps 
the best thing to be done, is, with all humility and respect 



30 LITERARY STUDIES. 

for the great names and greater minds of the elder English 
writers, to point out the several excellences of each, and 
thereby persuade to a study and contemplation of them. 
This we have always honestly endeavored to do, however 
feeble or imperfect may have been the execution of our 
purpose. 



LITERAM AMBASSADORS.^ 



The recent appointment of two of the most elegant-minded 
men our country has yet produced, as foreign ministers to 
two of the most powerful courts of the old world, has led 
us to the consideration of the many great authors, some- 
times poets, who have heretofore graced the same honora- 
ble office, and thence our subject has carried us into 
incidental reflections on the connection subsisting between 
politics and literature. Our country, we may remark in 
passing, is not only safe, as certain cautious writers observe, 
in such hands as those of the accomplished Everett and the 
tasteful Irving, but it is even highly honored by such re- 
presentations. Since her earliest connection with us, 
England has never given us so fair a specimen of her race 
as we now present her with ; except perhaps when the 
amiable enthusiast, the eloquent Bishop of Cloyne, visited 
our shores. And Spain, since the days of Cervantes, has 
been unable to exchange with us the equal of Washington 
Irving. Our two great countrymen may compare in lite- 
rary merit and social worth with the lettered statesmen of 
an earlier age in England's literary history, and are, with 
the Sidneys, the Wottons, the Herberts, of a purer epoch. 

* 1S4'2. 



32 LITERARY STUDIES. 

From the earliest dawn of civilisation, the ruler has been, 
in the noblest instances, always something more than a 
mere ruler. He has been, also, a priest ; frequently, an 
orator ; and sometimes a poet. Moses, and David, and So- 
lomon, among the Jews — Pericles was an orator and a critic : 
Demosthenes a great orator : Cicero, a moralist and rheto- 
rician : Ca3sar, a general, an author, an orator, and indeed 
an universal genius. But to confine ourselves to great 
Englishmen alone, and to those of that nation employed in 
embassies, — Dan Chaucer, the morning star of English 
poetry, was sent abroad on a political errand, and passed 
the greater part of his life at the courts of Edward III. and 
Richard II. In the lime of Henry VIII. we meet the 
names of the courtly Surrey, the poet and lover, as well as 
the knight and courtier, and the all-accomplished Lord 
Herbert (elder brother to George Herbert). Spenser was, 
if we are not mistaken, entrusted with a commission of sta- 
tistical survey, or something of the sort, which led to his 
work on Ireland. All the great prose writers and poets of 
Elizabeth's time took a deep interest in policy, except the 
dramatists. At home. Bacon, and Burleigh, and the Cecils, 
and Selden, and Hooker, and Coke : " abroad, in arms," 
Sidney and Raleigh (twin brothers in genius and glory), 
and those gay rivals for the favor of the maiden queen , 
Essex and Leicester. The great dramatists seem to have 
been too deeply and too delightfully engrossed by creating 
fair visions of their own, to trouble their heads much with 
the concerns of this sublunary planet. 

The reigns of the first two Stuarts were highly favora- 
ble to letters, both in church and state. Then were the 
high loyalist divines well rewarded for their learned devo- 
tion and eloquent zeal. Then arose that galaxy of brilliant 



LITERARY AMBASSADORS. OO 

names, Taylor, and South, and Barrow, and Donne ; and 
that rare class who combined the elegant scholar, the high 
churchman, the accurate man of business, the high-toned 
royalist, and the fine gentleman, in a proportion and degree 
we have seldom seen since. Of this class was Sir Henry 
Wotton, who was sent abroad on three several missions of 
an important nature, and finally ended his days as provost 
of Eton coUeore. His name is embalmed for ever in the 
epitaph of Cowley, and his fame perpetuated in the artless 
gossip of Izaak Walton. Howell, the letter-writer, was 
employed in the same way. So, too, was Dr. Donne, who 
went to France as secretary to his noble patron ; Cowley 
filled a similar station ; and Quarles, who at one period 
was cup-bearer to the famous and beautiful queen of Bo- 
hemia. The list of great names might be much length, 
ened by reference to books ; but we are quoting from 
memory. 

During the commonwealth the claims of literature were 
by no means overlooked. The parliamentary leaders were 
men of education, as well as of great natural abilities ; 
Pym, Hampden, and Sir Harry Vane. The sagacious 
Protector himself selected the best men for his own service. 
The greatest poet of all time was the private secretary of 
Cromwell, and his assistant Marvell was a true patriot and 
man of fine genius. Howe and Owen, the two greatest di- 
vines of that day, were the Protector's chaplains. The 
former of these Robert Hall pronounced to be superior to 
all the divines he had ever read, and to have given him 
more just ideas on theological subjects. The latter was 
the champion of the Independents, and is still regarded by 
his sect as a Hercules in controversial theology. 

On the restoration of Charles II., those divines, and law- 



34 LITERARY STUDIES. 

yers and scholars, who had given their support to his cause 
by their passive sutlerings, as well as by their active exer- 
tions with tongue or pen, were in general amply rewarded. 
The noble historian of the great rebellion was created Lord 
Chancellor. The imprisoned divines were restored to their 
pulpits. Defenders of the faith and adherents of the king 
suddenly rose from the condition of country curates to the 
offices of bishop and archbishop : court poets were enno- 
bled, and wits were in the ascendant. 

But at the revolution arose another change ; the whigs 
then came into power, and whig wciters were favored ac- 
cordingly. Addison and Steele were favorites with their 
party from their political tracts, as they were with the pub- 
lic from their wit, and humor, and style, and knowledge of 
life. Garth, the favorite whig physician, was also a popu- 
lar poet. The same claim gave reputation even to the 
prosy blockhead, Blackmore ; and both were knighted for 
their loyalty. The English La Fontaine (with greater 
licentiousness). Prior, was sent to France. Newton was 
made master of the mint, and the rest were well provided 
for. The great tory writers were continually depressed, 
and gained no fovor from the public save that which their 
brilliant poems extorted. Among these were Pope ; Swift, 
who never got beyond his deanship, because he could not 
stoop for a bishopric ; the amiable humorist, Arbuthnot ; 
the charming Gay ; the pensive Parnell. Two tory lead- 
ers, Bolingbroke and Atterbury, were even driven into 
exile, from which the latter never returned. 

Coming down to our own time, we may observe the close 
alliance between politics and law, and politics and litera- 
ture. The great public characters of the state, of this 
century, have been for the most part originally lawyers : 



LITERARY AMBASSADORS. 35 

the Cannings, and Peels, and Broughams of England, and 
the Adamses, the Pinckneys, and the Websters of America. 
Of letters, the chiefs too, the Scotts, and Wordsworths, the 
Coleridges, and Carlyles, the Hazlitts, and the Macauleys, 
have taken a deep interest in the issue of certain political 
questions, too often mere party questions. In many cases, 
the leaders in literature have held prominent offices in some 
one of the departments of government. The connection 
of poetry with politics is not hard to make out. The ardor 
of devotion, whether to a king or to a great abstract prin- 
ciple of right, in either case exerts a most important effect 
upon the imagination. Where power is embodied and per- 
sonified, as in a kingly government, more outward pomp is 
exhibited, but less by far of a high moral elevation of sen- 
timent, than is seen in the severe beauty and stern dignity 
of republicanism. Cato is a nobler character for the mind 
to dwell upon than Charles of England ; and George 
Washington is a greater name than Frederick or Catharine. 

A natural alliance is also easily formed between high 
churchmanship and royalty, and that poetry which is cap- 
tivated by the splendor of both ; and yet the finest descrip- 
tion of cathedral music has come from the pen of a puritan 
poet (vide II Penseroso) : and the most eloquent passage on 
the French revolution from the tory poet Wordsworth. 

The common objection, that literary pursuits incapacitate 
a man for business, has been long since refuted by Bacon 
and a host of writers down to the time of Addison. The 
accuracy and nicety that certain studies impart fit one ad- 
mirably for the employment of legislation and diplomacy. 
The invariably good effects of meditation and study on men- 
tal discipline, and the growth of the intellectual powers, are 
also discernible in every human employment, and can unfit 



36 LITERARY STUDIES. 

a man for nothing. Poets alone, it may be conceded, if 
not originally gifted with a robust moral constitution, may 
easily allow an effeminate sense of beauty to obscure their 
sense of rugged truths. The greatest poets, however, 
Dante and Milton, have been the firmest political philoso- 
phers and patriots. The Moores and Cornwalls of the 
time, might easily sink and faint beneath the heat and bur- 
den of the day. In our own country, Bryant and Dana 
would fight to the last for the principles of justice and 
liberty : our butterfly versifiers only would become inti- 
midated by the frown, and quail beneath the glances of 
power. American authors of the first rank are, without 
exception, warm advocates of the principles of a pure de- 
mocracy, untainted by any mixture of radicalism. There 
are Bancroft, the first historian ; Channing, the finest moral 
essayist ; Dewey, the greatest pulpit orator, and Hawthorne, 
the most original prose-poet, not only of our day, and of 
American literature, but of our age, and of English litera- 
ture. These are all devoted to the cause of truth, liberty, 
justice, and public, as well as private honor. 

Generally the selection of an ambassador at a foreign 
court is a matter left to mere hireling politicians, or deter- 
mined on insufficient or impartial grounds. But the repre- 
sentative of a great nation should be a great man. Ingenuity 
is not so much wanted as innate tact directing solid wisdom. 
A gentleman is to be preferred before what is commonly 
called a genius. Where there are many ceremonials, less 
talent is wanted. Occasions arise, nevertheless, where 
profound sagacity is needed, and where the weight of cha- 
racter is invaluable. Still, where elegance of mind and 
of manners may both be found united ; where a talent for 
negotiation and public business is farther set off by a bril- 



LITERARY AMBASSADORS. 



37 



liant elocution, with a fund of intellectual resources and 
personal accomplishments, — there, we have a finished pub- 
lic character, and such we conceive to be no more than a 
just, though rough sketch, of our minister to England. Mr. 
Irving, we suspect, is less of a man of business, but he has 
other claims to prefer. He is the historian of Columbus : 
he has charmed thousands by his romantic tales and pic- 
turesque descriptions of Spain. His state duties will be 
in all probability much less arduous than those of his illus- 
trious compeer, and consequently demand less of the diplo- 
matic talent. 

We conclude then, as we began, by congratulating our 
countrymen on the possession of such representations 
abroad : men to be honored and reverenced now, and to be 
known as classical writers and elegant gentlemen, to all 
future posterity. 



VI . 



THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 



Hazlitt's view is, that poets write bad prose for a variety 
of reasons, which we will consider in order. In the course 
of his essay,* he lays down certain positions that we cannot 
regard as tenable, and shall consequently attempt to show 
their unsoundness. The paper was probably written to 
attract attention rather than to decide the dogma ; it is 
brilliant and half true, but only half true. It contains 
some very fine special pleading, and certainly many valu- 
able hints ; but it is written to suit a theory, in defiance of 
facts, and from too narrow a generalization. We shall try 
to avoid doing injustice (even while advocating the opposite 
side) to the real merits of the essay ; to dwell upon the 
beauty, acuteness and eloquence of which, might alone oc- 
cupy the space of a separate criticism. 

The principal arguments our critic employs to confirm 
his decision are these : Poets, in writing prose (strange as 
it seems), display a want of cadence, have no principle of 
modulation in the musical construction of their periods ; but 
missing rhyme or blank verse, the regular accompaniment 
to which their words are to be said or sung, fall into a 
slovenly manner, devoid of art or melody. The prose 

* On the same subject, and bearing the same title. 



THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 39 

works of Sydney, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, Goldsmith and 
Dana, afford instances sufficient to disprove this assertion. 
At the same time it must be confessed, that rhyme has 
helped out many a bold thought and expanded (by rhetori- 
cal skill) many a half formed idea. It is no less true that 
certain eminent poets have as assuredly failed in attaining 
a first rate prose style, as certain capital prose writers have 
failed in writing even tolerable verse. We agree with 
Hazlitt, that Byron's prose is bad, inasmuch as he aims to 
make it too effective ; trying to knock down and stun an 
antagonist with the latter end of a sentence, as with the 
butt-end of a coach whip. Coleridge's prose, too, is not 
inaptly compared to the cast-off finery of a lady's wardrobe. 
The poet's prose muse being a sort of hand-maiden to his 
poetical (and true) mistress, and tricked out in the worn- 
out trappings of the latter, and ornaments at second hand. 
The Ancient Mariner, Love, the sonnets, tragedies, and 
occasional poetry of this author, are master-pieces : but his 
Watchman and Conciones ad Populum have been honestly 
censured as mere trash. 

Hazlitt is very caustic in his remarks on poetical prose, 
and with great justice. It is the weakest of all sorts of 
prose ; we prefer to it the very baldest expression, so it is 
only precise and clear. And so far from manifesting rich- 
ness of fancy or imagination, it is proof only of a good 
memory and a liberally stocked wardrobe of metaphorical 
commonplaces. It is the style of most sentimental writers, 
of the majority of orators, of fashionable preachers, and 
mystical philosophers. It is not the style of a manly 
thinker, of a man who has anything to say, or of a man of 
genius. No great orator or logician employs it ; we find 
it in no popular manuals of philosophy or politics. It is 



40 LITERARY STUDIES. 

never used by a good historian or a great novelist, nor in- 
deed by any one who can write anything else. 

The critic gives a further reason for the bad prose style 
of the poets. He says, the same liberty of inversion is not 
to be allowed in prose that prevails in poetry : that there is 
more restraint and severity in prose composition. Yet 
what can be more rigorous than the laws of verse ; what 
style so compressed and close, yet so pithy and " matter- 
full," as the style of the finest poets? Truth, adds the 
author of Table-Talk, is the essential object of the prose- 
man (we suspect he meant the philosopher, from the au- 
thorities that follow) : but beauty is the supreme intent of 
the poet. At the present day, have we not learnt a better 
lesson than this, after the teaching of centuries ? Is not 
the poet the moralist and "right popular philosopher?" 
Do we not learn the truest and deepest metaphysics (so far 
as we can learn that internal and individual science from 
books) from the best poets : do we not obtain our highest 
ethical maxims and our truest aesthetical views from the 
same sources ? Doth not the poet impress our hearts and 
arouse our inmost sympathies, with a skill far superior to 
that of the priest or seraphic doctor ? But we need not 
dilate upon that head, nor repeat in plain terms, the com- 
prehensive and philosophical picture of the true poet, 
drawn by one* of the greatest and most eloquent of the 
craft, in the rich and glowing colors of fancy. 

Hazlitt has very strangely fallen into the obsolete doc- 
trines of Johnson and the Anglo-Gallic school of criticism 
(the English pupils of Dubos, Bossu and Bouhours) ; that 
pleasure is the highest aim of the poet : that his noblest 

* Sidney. 



THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 4l 

powers tend only to amuse or recreate. This is true of 
the minor and ligliter poets, but not of poets of the first 
class. It holds with regard to Swift and Prior, not to 
Milton or Young. It refers more correctly to purely fan- 
ciful poets, than grandly imaginative writers. To restrict 
ourselves to a single nation — the Hebrews. Is David, or 
Job, or Solomon, a " pretty " poet : do their writings fur- 
nish merely entertainment ? Are they not rather pro- 
foundly instructive, as well as sublime and impassioned ? 
Is Homer, or Dante, a trifler : or are we to estimate Shak- 
speare and jEschylus as ordinary playwrights? Every 
critical tyro knows better. But our critic reduces the 
question to one of metaphysical morality. He says, in 
part truly, as others have written before him, that forti- 
tude is not the characteristical virtue of poets. This, too, 
is a hasty assertion : it is not the virtue of the majority of 
the poets, nor of the mass of mankind, but it is a distin- 
guishing trait of the largest souls. If Milton and Dante, 
Johnson and Scott, possessed not this noble virtue, there 
were none ever did. And look at the manly resolution of 
Burns, of Elliott, of Bryant, of Dana, of Cowper, and 
Wordsworth. If these are not teachers of long suffering 
and patient endurance, we know not where such are to be 
found. 

From the want of sufficient self-command, reasons Haz- 
litt, the poets have been unable to conquer a sense of 
beauty, by which they were fascinated and had become 
enslaved. Nor need they to conquer it, save when opposed 
to truth, a higher and rarer form of intellectual beauty. 
Truth is more beautiful than what we ordinarily style 
beauty, or rather the highest truth is beauty itself in the 
abstract. Sensual beauty is truth materialized, and de- 



42 LITERARY STUDIES. 

rives its charms from the union of proportion, fitness, utility, 
and an innate harmony — what Hazlitt meant is, that poets 
too much regard ornament, and fall in love with their own 
figurative fancies, worshipping the idols they have set up 
in their own imaginations, of their own creation, like the 
heathen of old. They seem to mistake fiction for fact, and 
rather dally with fancy than are filled with faith. They 
accumulate beautiful metaphors without regard to their 
connection or logical sequence. They do not hunt for 
illustrations to the general text, so much as for striking 
analysis of any description, whether suited to the subject 
in hand or not. This, again, we conceive to be palpably 
a misrepresentation. Where are the reasoning Pope and 
Dryden; that master of the argumentum ad absurdum, 
Butler; those logicians of the parlor. Swift and Prior, and 
Wolcot and Moore ? Where is the whole race of meta- 
physical poets placed ? Then, too, the large class of pro- 
fessedly didactic or speculative poets from Hesiod to Words- 
worth, what becomes of them ? Where is the critical 
Churchill, the moral Johnson, the religious Cowper ? In 
fact, the poets are the greatest reasoners, the most accurate, 
brief and pointed, conveying an argument in a couplet, and 
a syllogism in a line. The Germans and Coleridge have 
settled the doctrine of the losjical method of imagination, in 
her (apparently) wildest career, and that she lias a law and 
sequence of her own, not to be measured by mechanical 
reasons. It must be conceded, besides, that poetical teach- 
ing is more beautiful than the lessons of the prose-m.an ; 
that fancy's illustrative coloring afiords a grateful relief to 
the over-worked reason. In effect, too, the most captivat- 
ing pictures afford the strongest arguments; an illustration 
is always an argument by analogy, a descriptive syllogism, 
or reasoning by picture. 



THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 43 

We have thus concisely and categorically responded to 
the different points of objection, but we lay very little 
stress on any remarks of our own, except they be con- 
firmed by a bulwark of testimony. Fortunately, we 
have a strong defence of this kind, behind which to en- 
trench ourselves from sudden assaults, and we shall not 
hesitate to avail ourselves of the forces we have been able 
to collect. Sydney, our earliest prose writer, of classic 
rank, who was also a poet, was almost equally successful 
in both departments, and in his Defence of Poesy, at least, 
a writer of pure, clear, sweet Virgilian prose. Hall's con- 
templations rival his versified satires, and are equally excel- 
lent ; the magnificent declamation of Milton and the natural 
eloquence of Cowley are celebrated, yet the sermons of 
Donne, and the prose characters of Samuel Butler, are not 
to be forgotten. Quarles was no less close and pointed in 
his Enchiridion than in his Emblems. -There are the let- 
ter-writers. Pope, Gray and Cowper, with Burns, Charles 
Lamb, and our own Willis. Even Hazlitt allows the per- 
fect prose style of Dryden ; yet the name of Goldsmith has 
been singularly overlooked. 

Respectability in poetry is intolerable ; yet we allow 
many degrees of excellence in prose. Third-rate poets 
sometimes have been converted into prose writers of the 
second class. Swift and Addison are known chiefly by 
their prose : they wrote clever verse also ; no one would 
call either a great poet, yet they were great writers. 
Johnson's Rasselas, and the Lives of the Poets, place the 
prose writer where neither Irene nor London could by any 
possibility have placed him. Shenstone's maxims and 
essays more than counterbalance all his poetical works, 
with the exception of the Schoolmistress. 



44 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Where poets fail in prose, it is from a want of the more 
prosaic elements of composition. Coleridge, for instance, 
had little practical shrewdness, though an imagination 
second only to Milton's, and much as Campbell's prose is 
at present censured (the causes of the weakness of which 
and of his ill-success in book-making, latterly, are evident), 
let any one turn to his early essay on English Poetry, if 
he would find a model of beauty supported by strength and 
judgment, refined by art. 

The poets are not, moreover, the best prose writers, but 
incomparably the best critics, especially of each other. 
The vulgar error of the envy existing among men of 
genius, is as baseless as is the opinion that a fine poet 
is necessarily a weak critic, or the supposition that his 
imagination is too strong for his judgment. The greatest 
poets are not ignorant oracles of wisdom, but elaborate 
artists, who can give a reason for most of their works, 
though the very rarest melodies of their lyre are struck by 
a divine impulse above and beyond their command. There 
existed a crude and narrow notion of the profession of the 
critic formerly : that he was a spiteful, malicious libeller, 
rather than an honest judge and admiring advocate. The 
Queen Anne wits appeared to consider a good critic to be 
the reverse side of a bad poet, as the best vinegar was 
made out of the vilest cider. To pick flaws in reputations 
and writings, once made a man's fame. Now, we know a 
litile better. We can believe genuine criticism to be a 
labor of love, and the fruit of enthusiastic reverence. 

Philosophical poetry is the deepest criticism, in the hands 
of the master-bards, Horace, Pope, Wordsworth, and Dana. 
We entirely believe with Owen Felltham, that " a grave 
poem is the deepest kind of writing." Dramatic composi- 



THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS. 45 

tion is, of all others, the most artificial form of writing — 
and we find the first tragic and comic writers profoundly 
conversant with the principles of their art, learned Ben, 
the judicious Beaumont, witty Congreve. So, too, the 
early classical translators into English, were philologists 
and critics of necessity, Fairfax and Chapman. The 
musing Drummond has left his judgment of books behind 
him — Dryden has written the best characters of Beaumont, 
and Fletcher, and rare Ben, that any critic has yet done ; 
and he has left nothing for later writers to impair or add 
to his portrait of Shakspeare. " Glorious John's" prefaces 
are models of their kind, and the earliest specimens of good 
criticism in England. Shakspeare and Milton, from the 
perfection of their works, we naturally infer to have been 
exquisite critics. 

Butler, by his satire on the abuse of learning, and ridi- 
cule of the French, has disclosed a vein of caustic criti- 
cism. Cowley was a critic and philosopher, even more 
than a poet ; he thoroughly appreciated the most opposite 
styles of poetry, the Pindaric and Anacreontic. " The 
Phenix Pindar," he has truly written, " is a vast species 
alone," and consequently, he is himself little more than an 
able follower, a capital imitator ; but the spirit of Anacreon 
he has caught with wonderful felicity, and paraphrased 
him in a style immeasurably beyond Tom Moore. In 
truth, the Anacreontics of Cowley surpass even the gay 
flashes of Anacreon, in spirit and effect. Charles Second's 
wits were shrewd, sharp men of the world, satirists, and 
critics, not to be imposed upon by pretension. Of this 
assertion, the Duke of Buckingham's Rehearsal is a proof, 
and an inimitable satire — Rochester, Waller, St. Evre- 
mond, Roscommon, were all clear and discriminating 
critics ; but their judgment did not reach very far. 



46 " LITERARY STUDIES. 

Pope's finest philosophical poem is his Essay on Criti- 
cism ; and the hcst imitators of Pope — Johnson and Rogers 
— are essentially critics with widely different tastes : 
Johnson rudely masculine, and Rogers delicate and fastidi- 
ous to effeminacy. 

To come to the present century ; where do we read 
finer critical fragments than in Coleridge's Table Talk, 
and the notes to Lamb's Dramatic Specimens ? Shelley 
was a metaphysical critic. Hunt and Lamb are perhaps 
the most delicate. The papers on Lear and on Shak- 
speare's tragedies are the very finest criticisms ever 
penned on that most fertile theme of eulogy — the Shak- 
spearean Drama. Leigh Hunt has written a body of the 
most agreeable, if not the profoundest, criticism of his 
time. Mr. Dana has produced articles on Kean's acting 
and Shakspeare that entitle him to rank even with Lamb 
and Hunt. 

As a general rule, the best prose writers are the safest 
critics for ordinary reading, if only from the absence of - 
any possible competition. Where they rank with the 
greatest critics, it is from the large share they possess of 
the poetical temperament, and of fancy. The critic should 
be half poet, half philosopher ; with acute powers of analy- 
sis, a lively fancy, deep sensibility, and close reasoning 
faculties. This is a very rare combination : yet Hazlitt, 
Rousseau, and Emerson, might be placed in this category, 
with a score or two of names besides, taken from the vast 
array of miscellaneous authors. The poet ranks first, the 
critic immediately below him ; and the two united, each 
first of his class, combine to form the highest instance of 
imagination and intellectual power. 



VII 



THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. 



Poverty is a comparative term. Between the extremities 
of pauperism and that moderate competence, which the 
wealthy speak of with contempt, as a poor pittance, and 
which is certainly trifling in comparison with their " un- 
sunn'd heaps," the interval is very wide. The condition 
of the very poor we do not take into consideration, at pre- 
sent, as the main topic of our inquiry, though we shall by 
no means omit to speak of them in turn ; but we shall en- 
deavor to present a picture of simplicity and moderation in 
living, and the advantages of a sufficient competence (para- 
doxical as it may be thought) over an overgrown and 
superfluous income. 

Poverty has many significations, with a wide range, 
embracing the pauper and the poor gentleman, aye, and 
the poor noble, in some countries. Kings even have been 
beggars, and have subsisted on casual bounty. The mil- 
lionaire thinks all men poor, who are not possessed of equal 
wealth with himself; while the day laborer regards the 
small trader and master mechanic as rich men. In towns, 
one standard of wealth prevails ; in the country it is much 
lower. Thus we find an ever varying measure of the 
goods of fortune. Of a nobler species of wealth, it is not 



48 LITERARY STUDIES. 

SO difficult to ascertain the true value. An excellent book 
is yet to be written for the rich, which should inform them 
of their duties towards their poorer neighbors; which 
should resolve the claims the poor have upon them, from 
the claims of nature, as well as from conventional position ; 
which should confirm them in habits of benevolence and in 
the practice of " assisting the brethren." By assistance, 
we refer not merely to alms-giving, that being regarded as 
a fundamental part of charity. But we also include under 
that phrase, the giving of wise and disinterested counsel : 
defending from oppression and slander : persuading to the 
practice of right and justice : warning from evil, by instil- 
ling good principles and generous sentiments : and in the 
comprehensive language of Scripture, loving our neighbor 
as ourself, and consequently acting for him as if for ourself. 
Higher charity than this, is none : a charity the richest 
may be too poor to bestow ; a charity the poorest may 
prove rich in dispensing. If love abounded, what a rich 
world would not this planet become ! If man was to man 
a brother and a friend (at the same time increasing the 
world's gear not a copper, and neither introducing any 
fantastical schemes of agrarian equality), in all the rela- 
tions of life and family, as master and servant, father and 
son, brother and companion, artist and artisan, in sickness 
and in health, at home or abroad, there could be no poverty, 
no disappointment, and none but natural sorrows. For 
though many sources of grief would still continue fresh 
and open, as sickness, death, loss of friends and family, 
and failure in favorite plans of life and action, yet they 
would be so mitigated by an universal tenderness, and so 
suffered by a general sympathy, as to lose half their sharp, 
ness in losing all their repulsive features. No disappoint- 



THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. 49 

merits could then occur, because sincerity and plain dealing 
would take the place of falseness and deceit. None but a 
self- tormentor could then be unhappy, where all would be- 
come companions in good and evil seasons, and through 
every changing round of fortune's wheel. But this is an 
ideal not soon to be recognized. 

A man without a penny has yet what all the wealth in 
the world cannot purchase — the human form and the hu- 
man nature. With these, if he has health and resolution, 
he may become anything, except what can be reached only 
by innate genius or a higher order of mental gifts than his 
own. Give him education, you make him a scholar; 
brfeeding, you train him a gentleman ; religion and mora- 
lity, and you fill him with the sentiments of a Christian, 
Let no one say, the poor scholar or the poor gentleman is 
hurt by his education and manners. Pride often distorts 
those characters, but they ought to be above pride. A 
cultivated mind, so far from being trammelled by a narrow 
income, flies beyond it, and taste, the quality of the fine in- 
tellect, is a faculty of selection. The wisest economy is 
the nicest taste. Profusion is tasteless. A man of fine 
judgment and small income will actually live in a more 
genteel style, than a rich, coarse-minded nabob. He may 
have fewer articles of expense, but they will be choice and 
delicate. His style of living will be frugal, yet elegant ; 
which is more pleasing than extravagance without judg- 
ment. A genteel taste in living eschews extravagance, 
pomp, and all superfluity, as essentially vulgar. There is 
not a more pitiful sight than a mean-spirited man in a splen- 
did house. His soul is too small for it. On the other hand, 
the great heart cannot be contained within the most mag- 
nificent palace, and yet may content itself in the most 

3 



56 LITERARY STUDIES. 

humble mansion. The great and good poor man, in his 
modest and retired parlor, affords a nobler spectacle than a 
king or a pyramid. 

Riches too often excite absurdity of conduct : the giver 
of the gorgeous feast gets only a rich harvest of ridicule 
for liis pains and anxiety. The master of an immense es- 
tablishment is little better than the landlord of a great 
hotel. Guests enter and depart : he is pushed aside as a 
stranger and in the way. All this while his personal gra- 
tifications are limited. The poor soul ! he lives for others, 
his wealth is for others. He is nobody himself — but go to 
the house where the man is greater than the mansion, and 
you forget the bare walls unhung with admirable paintings, 
for his face and the countenances of a loving circle are the 
finest portraits in the world ; you tread on a carpet with- 
out reflecting it is no Brussels pattern, and you sit easily 
on a chair that has no satin cushions for the indolent par- 
venus of fashion. If a man is not rich, how much he 
avoids : from how many petty distractions is he not free ? 
Plutus is even a severer master than Necessity. 

In point of respectability the difference is great. Hardly 
without an exception, the ancient families of this country, 
the descendants of the statesmen, and lawyers, and heroes 
of the revolution (our only real aristocracy), are poor. The 
rich class are, in the great majority of cases, sprung ori- 
ginally from the lowest class, who have acquired wealth 
by cunning and pernicious habits ; without education, with- 
out sentiment ; governed by no laws of courtesy, subserv- 
ient to no dictates of the Spiritual Philosopliy ; coarse-minded 
and coarse-mannered, but clothed in purple and fine linen, 
and faring sumptuously every day. With such as these, 
poverty of spirit and want of pelf are synonymous terms. 



THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. 51 

The poor rich man and the rich poor man are the most per- 
plexing problems. 

Authors and professed scholars, excluded as in great 
measure they are from amassing a fortune, and ill paid for 
their elaborate labors, are among the objects of especial 
pity, not to say contempt (pitiable truly, and returning upon 
the contemner) of these bloated minions of Dives. They 
would patronize merit, and condescend to take genius by 
the hand. Contemptible arrogance ! ye meanest of the 
mean, ignoble souls, whose highest privilege it is to be im- 
mortalized to posterity by the classic scorn of the indignant 
human creature you would protect ; the true joys of the 
scholar, the calm life of the thinker, the grateful occupa- 
tions of the author are unknown to you. Thriftless men, 
who in any other occupation would have succeeded as ill, 
and incapables, who should as soon have attempted shoe- 
making as authorship, have managed to reflect a most un- 
deserved odium on those pursuits, which adorn wealth and 
elevate poverty, which beautify science and invigorate bu- 
siness. Worthily and in sincerity pursued, what occupa- 
tion is so full of utility, as well as of delight, as literature. 
A mode of life that leads to reflection and self-denial ; that 
fosters humanity and begets an enlarged curiosity ; that 
inclines equally to serious, resolved action, and to a gay, 
cheerful temper ; which teaches to confine our wants and 
limit our desires, but at the same time to expand the affec- 
tions, and to fortify the will ; a mode of life that consecrates 
its followers as a select body of liberal spirits ; that unites 
the cultivation of the highest faculties with the performance 
of the commonest duties ; that inspires a sense of reverence 
in the dullest souls, and fascinates the roving eye of plea- 
sure ; employments, in fine, which form alone the worthi- 



52 LITERARY STUDIES. 

est labors of the wisest and best — these constitute the 
occupations and fill the hours of the scholar. 

The literary life is never so happily spent as in a condi- 
tion of moderate competence and in the enjoyment of social 
liappiness. The wealthiest scholar, even if a man of genius, 
is obliged, from the nature of his position, and to avoid the 
scandal of meanness, or the odium of an unsociable dispo- 
sition, to live in a manner abhorrent to his tastes and lite- 
rary habits. He must live splendidly, when he would 
prefer elegance and quiet ; he must entertain the inditlerent 
and the inquisitive, where he liad rather be surrounded by 
the chosen friends of his youth. In a word, the rich scho- 
lar must live like a mere rich man, and is in danger of 
sinking the first character in the second. Wealth has 
obscured genius which would have been drawn out by 
exertion ; at least as often as talent has been obscured by 
misfortune. 

A great error, though a very frequent one, is, tliat utter 
solitude and celibacy are suited to the man of letters. 
That the greatest works require long meditation and per- 
fect repose is true. No less true is it that the periodical 
critic and essayist must pursue his labors in a state of se- 
renity and partial retirement. The true literary life is a 
quiet existence. No genuine scholar ever yet loved a 
crowd. Yet he loves society for conversation, and masses 
for observation of manners. He loves chiefly domestic 
pleasures ; the good wife has often assisted, and never yet 
impeded, the occupations of her husband. The inmates of 
his dwelling learn to respect his hours of solitude and study. 
A judicious disposal of his time will leave the master his 
own master, and the experiences of domesticity will prove 
more rich and abundant than the knowledge of the hack- 
ney courtier or politician. 



THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. 



53 



Privacy may boast of its heroes and heroism that a pub- 
lie scene cannot display. We look in the wrong place 
for truly great characters ; we seek them in high stations, 
but seldom find them there. Magnanimity, like eloquence, 
is often found where we least expect it. There are more 
heroical actions occurring every day in the retirement of 
private life than are to be seen on the great public stage 
of the world. There is more of fortitude exhibited, more 
of patience in suffering, more true benevolence, a nobler 
charity, a wider and wiser generosity, deeper affection, and 
higher aims than the mind of a mere worldling can con- 
ceive. The reason is plain. The greatest intellects seek 
repose from vain struggles of ambition and inefficient plans 
of improvement. The gravest business of life, rightly 
viewed, is a mere farce, and those pleasing labors and en- 
dearing adversities, that make up a private life of contented 
trial and consequent happiness, are in fact higher and of 
more real importance. Domestic life is the only field for 
a certain class of virtues, by no means the least in value. 
These are of the softer and milder kind, amiable and 
attractive. Home is the school of the afTections, as the 
world affords the test of the will and intellect. In that em- 
bowered valley bloom the sweet flowers of heart's-ease and 
contented joy. 

The life of Wordsworth might be proposed as a model to 
the author who loves letters rather than a literary reputa- 
tion, who prefers fame to fashion — not only to the poet but 
to the humblest prose writer, do we propose it. His fine 
maxim should be engraven on the heart of every true stu- 
dent — " Plain living, and high thinking." De Quincy, 
who published his recollections of the late poets some years 
since, in Tait's Magazine, has described the life of the Mil- 



54 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



tonic Bard, as simple to frugality. He resided in a small 
cottage with his wife and sister ; his guest was conducted 
into the largest room in the house, smaller than an ordinary 
bed room, and which had another occupant, Wordsworth's 
eldest boy. The common sitting room was half parlor and 
half kitchen. The great poet, like a good man, a lover of 
simple pleasures, delighted in his kettle's " faint undersong." 
His library was very small within doors, but without, what 
immense folios were his daily reading — the grand moun- 
tain scenery of his neighborhood. Nature is Wordsworth's 
library, or at least wisest commentator. Were he never so 
rich he could possess no pictures like the landscape around 
him. Even his friend, the fine painter. Sir George Beau- 
mont, might only copy this original. And for company, 
what more needed he, to whom grand thoughts in rich abun- 
dance came flocking at his call ; who possessed such an 
admirable sister and so excellent a wife. Southey was 
but a few hours' journey distant. Coleridge was some- 
times his guest. There too came Hazlitt and Charles 
Lamb, and there ever abided guardian angels of the poet, 
the spirits of humanity and philosophy, in strict alliance 
with the Genius of Poesy ! 

None but a poor spirited fool ever esteemed a man the 
less for his poverty, and pity, in such cases, is insult. The 
compassion is a glozing apology for the indulgence of purse 
pride, the meanest form of Satan's favorite sin, and which 
he must heartily despise. He who devotes a life to letters 
cannot expect wealth : competency is the most he can look 
for, a thorough education, in its widest sense, for his children, 
and a comfortable, though confined maintenance for those 
dearest to him and least fitted to struggle with misfortune. 
A fair example and an honorable fame is a richer legacy 



THE MORALITY OF POVERTY. 55 

than a large fortune without either. Most fortunate he, 
who can unite all. But the spirit of study is adverse to 
the spirit of accumulation. A man with one idea, and that 
of money-making, can hardly fail, from one dollar, of real- 
izing a million. But a man of many ideas, of a compre- 
hensive spirit, and of aspiring views, can never contract 
his manly mind to the circumference of a store or factory. 
In his fixed and awful gaze at the wonders of creation, or 
in his rapt ecstasy at the celestial harmony of poesy, oppor- 
tunities of profit will slip by, the golden moments of barter 
escape. His purse is lighter, it must be confessed ; but he 
has gained a richer accession of fancies and feelings than 
the world can give or take away. 



VIII. 



CHAPTER ON 



SOME OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 



The Sonnet is of Italian origin, and was first imported into 
England from that country by the Earl of Surrey, 

" that reno'.vned lord, 
Th' old English glory bravely that restor'd, 
That prince and poet (a name more divine)," 

as Drayton enthusiastically writes. Originally a pupil of 
Petrarch, he left the metaphysical style of his master for a 
more gallant and courtly manner. He was " the bright 
particular star " of the court of Henry YIIL, as Sidney 
was of that of Elizabeth, and resembled his famous suc- 
cessor in that dangerous post of favorite in more than one 
trait of his character. Like him he was an accomplished 
gentleman, a graceful poet, an elegant scholar, and a gal- 
lant knight. Like him he chanted soft, amorous lays to 
his chosen fair, and has immortalized the source of his in- 
spiration in strains of melting beauty. Surrey is the first 
classic English poet (we place Chaucer at the head of the 
romantic school, before the era of Spenser and Shakspeare); 
and he was the first writer of English sonnets. He is said 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 57 

to have been the introducer of blank verse into our poetry. 
For these two gifts to our literature, if for none others, we 
should hold his reputation in honorable remembrance. 
We recollect no one sonnet of surpassing beauty (Mrs. 
Jameson, in her Loves of the Poets, has culled the finest 
lines) : they will bear no comparison with succeeding 
pieces in the same department. And as we wish to secure 
space for certain fine specimens of Sidney, Shakspeare, 
Drummond, and Milton, we must not encumber our page 
with any but the choicest productions of the Muse. 

We pass then to the all-accomplished Sidney. His son- 
nets are chiefly " vain and amatorious," yet full of " wit 
and worth." We agree heartily in Lamb's admiration for 
them, as well as for their admirable author, deprecating 
entirely the carping and illiberal spirit in which Hazlitt 
criticized them. The acutest and most eloquent English 
critic of this century was sometimes prejudiced and occa- 
sionally partial. We find him so here. For delicacy, 
fancy, and purity of feeling, Sidney is the finest of English 
writers of the Sonnet, He is certainly less weighty and 
grand than Milton, less pathetic than Drummond, far less 
copious and rich than Wordsworth, yet in the graceful 
union of the Poet and Lover surpassing all. He is 
here, as in his life and actions, the Knight " sans peur et 
sans reproche." Stella, the goddess of his idolatry, was at 
once his mistress and his muse ; anciently, a very frequent 
combination of characters. We know not, but believe the 
Sonnets of Sidney are little known. This, and the intrin- 
sic beauty of the poem, must serve to excuse us for the 
following extract : 

Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
Seem most alone in greatest company, 
3* 



58 LITERARY STUDIES. 

With dearth of words, or answers quite awry 
To them that would make speech of speech arise. 
They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies, 
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
So in my swelling breast, that only I 
Fawn on myself, and others do despise. 
For Pride I think doth not my soul possess, 
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
But one worse fault, Ambition, I confess. 
That makes me oft my best friends overpass. 
Unseen, unheard, while thought to highest place 
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 

In a further beautiful sonnet occurs this fanciful apos^ 
trophe to Sleep : 

Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certain knot of peace. 
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. 
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release. 
The indifferent judge between the high and low. 

This reminds us strongly of Shakspeare's famous excla- 
mation of Macbeth, bent on his murderous errand : 

the innocent sleep ; 



Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath. 
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course. 
Chief Nourisher in life's feast. 

The sonnets of Sidney are highly characteristic. They 
combine contemplation and knightly grace. They were 
written in the heyday of his blood (he died at the age ot 
thirty-four) : and cannot be fairly compared with the later 
productions of a greater and more mature genius. Sidney, 
it must not be forgotten, was a courtier and chivalrous sol- 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 59 

dier, no less than the admired poet of his time, and we 
should allow accordingly in our estimate of his poetry. 
He filled a brief career with monuments of literary glory 
and military honor : he endeared himself to a nation by 
his graces and worth, and drew friends and followers to 
his heart, by its sincerity and virtues. He died " with his 
martial cloak about him," and full of fame. It was reck- 
oned an honor to have been his friend. History records 
not his enemy. 

The little we know of Shakspeare is to be learnt from a 
perusal of his Sonnets, which afford a glimpse of poetical 
autobiography. The main particulars are his devoted gra- 
titude to his noble patron, the generous Earl of Southamp- 
ton, and his romantic attachment to a " fair personne," 
who is supposed to have been a beautiful specimen of an 
unfortunate class of females. Our " myriad-minded " bard, 
far above the general order of humanity, as he was, from 
his vast intellectual superiority, was yet a very man (and 
for that we love him all the better) in his affections and 
passions, like to one of us. The most profound of philo- 
sophers, the noblest of humorists, the grandest Painter of 
the passions, was a lover and gallant gentleman. Perhaps 
his constancy was unable to stand the test of temptation on 
all occasions (but that we may allow to a roving and ex- 
cited youth) : though after middle life we hear of his quiet 
life as a landholder and paterfamilias. Doubtless " the 
roaming swaats that drank divinely " at the Mermaid, and 
his lively associates at the Globe Theatre, were sometimes 
too much for any prudential plan of life. But in those 
scenes the great teacher learnt many an instructive lesson, 
which he has taught us ; nor shall we dare to arraign the 
venial follies of the selectest spirit of our race. We find 



60 LITERARY STUDIES. 

numerous single lines and couplets in some of these sonnets 
that develope the character of their author more fully than 
any labored biographical or critical commentary. He 
gives us pictures of his own feelings, his desiring " this 
man's art and that man's scope :" he apologizes for his 
profession as an actor, insinuating that it degrades him not 
(as it never should degrade any, but as it too often tends to 
degradation). He fairly speaks out a lofty self-estimate, 
none the less true for its candor : 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; 

But you shall shine more bright in these contents 

Than unwept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. 

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 

And broils root out the work of masonry, 

Nor Mars's sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn 

The living record of your memory. 

The vulgar error of Shakspeare's reserve must have 
arisen with those who never saw his miscellaneous poems. 
It is true, amid the varied characters that stud his dramatic 
page, it is impossible to fasten any upon him, who painted 
them all. But we find self-confession enough in the son- 
nets, and we are much surprised at the nature of it, so much 
of melancholy and repining, utterly unlike our idea of the 
robust genius and vigorous heart of the creator of FalstafF 
and of Lear. 

Shakspeare's best sonnets, and indeed nearly all of them, 
are devoted to the expression of an apparently hopeless 
passion. They form a love history, mysterious and ob- 
scure, which we shall not attempt to penetrate. It is 
enough to add, that (which might be premised as impossi- 
ble) they do not raise Shakspeare to a higher rank than he 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 61 

before attained : that perhaps we idolize his fame Jess 
where we are admitted (too freely) into certain secrets of 
his personal history, and it must also be confessed that he 
has dallied with the muse in these offerings at her shrine, 
rather than put forth his Samson strength in lofty triumph. 
On no one occasion does he attempt to reach a higher 
pitch than was attained by the general attempts in the same 
form of poetry. It is true even the lightest trifles are im- 
pressed with a nameless spirit from his exuberant genius 
and subtle individuality. It is true his phrases, his expres- 
sive language, are eminently Shakspearean. Yet are they 
comparatively wasted on trivial themes, or levelled to a 
moderate keynote of passion. They contain none of the 
deep contemplativeness of Wordsworth, or the spirited yet 
condensed power of Milton. We speak thus of these pro- 
ductions in comparison with similar attempts of other great 
poets ; and more especially in comparison with the other 
works of Shakspeare — his dramas, the richest legacy ever 
bequeathed to mankind by a single individual. For any 
other bard, it would be praise enough to have equalled the 
least valuable works of Shakspeare, and these sonnets 
would make the reputation of almost any one else. The 
two finest occur in one of his plays ;* that on Study, be- 
ginning, " Study is like heaven's glorious sun,*' and that 
more tender passage of self-expostulation and apology, 
for which we must make room: 

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, 
'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, 
Persuade my heart to this false perjury ? 
Vows for thee broke, deserve not punishment. 

* Love's Labor Lost 



62 LITERARY STUDIES. 

A woman I forswore ; but I will prove. 
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee : 
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love ; 
Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. 
My vow was breath, and breath a vapor is ; 
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine, 
Exhal'st this vapor vow ; in thee it is : 
If broken, then it is no fault of mine. 
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise 
To break an oath, to win a Paradise ? 

His picture of his mistress forms a fair pendant to the 
above, and should not therefore be omitted. 

Fair is my love, but not as fair as fickle, 

Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty. 

Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle, 

Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty, 

A little pale, with damask dye to grace her, 

None fairer, nor one falser to deface her. 

Her lips to mine how often hath she join'd, 

Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing ! 

How many tales to please me hath she coin'd. 

Dreading my love, the loss whereof still fearing ! 

Yet in the midst of all her pure pretestings. 

Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all, were jestings. 

She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth. 

She burnt with love, as soon as straw outburneth ; 

She fram'd the love, and yet she foil'd the framing. 

She bade love last, and yet she fell a turning. 

Was this a lover, or a lecher whether ? 

Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.* 

Passing over the slight effusions of forgotten versifiers, 
our list brings us next to Drummond of Hawthornden, the 

* A somewhat similar history is to be read in the " Modern Pyg- 
malion " of a late brilliant critic and metaphysician. 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 63 

best representative of the Scottish muse before Allan Ram- 
say's time, and the friend of Ben Jonson. The record of 
their famous conversations has been made public of late 
years, through the researches of one of the Antiquarian 
Societies. Like all of the early sonneteers, who copied 
their master Petrarch in this, as in other respects, Drum- 
mond had his mistress for a muse — but the specimen we 
shall present of his sonnets, is one of a more general de- 
scription. It is addressed to Sleep, and discovers a close 
resemblance to the verses of Sidney and Shakspeare, be- 
fore quoted : 

Sleep, silence' child, sweet father of soft rest, 
Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings, 
Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, 
Sole comforter of minds which are opprest ; 
Lo by thy charming rod all breathing things 
Lie slumb'ring, with forgetfulness possest, 
And yet o'er me to spread thy drowsy wings 
Thou sparest (alas !) who cannot be thy guest. 
Since I am thine, come, but with that face 
To inward light which thou art wont to show. 
With fancied solace ease a true-felt woe ; 
Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace. 

Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath : 

I long to kiss the image of my death. 

This poet is distinguished for a sweet and elegant pathetic 
vein ; his line is " most musical, most melancholy." He 
writes thus of his prevalent manner, in a sonnet on his 
Lute : 

What art thou but a harbinger of woe ? 

Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more. 

But orphan's wailings to the fainting ear. 

Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear, 



64 LITERARY STUDIES. 

For which be silent as in words before ; 
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign. 
Like widow'd turtle still her loss complain. 

For this lugubrious coloring he accounts by the absence 
of " that dear voice," which did thy sounds approve : 

Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, 
Is reft from earth to tune those spheres above. 

Milton is the last great name of the elder bards we shall 
presume to invoke. He is the second sonnet writer in 
English ; we place Wordsworth at the head. Some half 
dozen of Milton's (he wrote altogether only fourteen, we 
believe) are unequalled. But though our great living poet 
rarely rises as high as Milton, yet his copiousness and un- 
matched volubility of expression combine to give him the 
precedence. Shakspeare we place out of comparison, since 
he attempted no sonnets of the reflective kind. Few of 
Wordsworth's bear any mention of love, and where they 
do speak of it, it is a holy thing, not the libertine passion 
of courtly versifiers. Milton's grandest sonnets, each of 
them a small epic in itself, have been sufficiently noticed, 
but there is one less referred to, that we think deserves the 
more regard, from its personal nature, referring to himself 
with a certain sublime self-consideration and Grecian en- 
thusiasm, that bespeak the builder of the loftiest of epics. 

When the assault was intended on the city — 

Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms, 

Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize, 

If deed of honor did thee ever please. 

Guard them, and him within protect from harms. 

He can requite thee ; for he knows the charms 

That call fame on such gentle acts as these. 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 65 

And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas. 

Whatever clime the sun's bright circle warms. 

Lift not thy spear against the Muses' bower : 

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 

The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 

Went to the ground : and the repeated air 

Of sad Electra's Poet had the power 

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare. 

The Sonnet is, perhaps, the most artificial form of 
poetry, and, in consequence, the most difficult to execute 
with spirit. The chief difficulty appears to lie in preserv- 
ing the unity and integrity of the single thought or senti- 
ment which it is intended to express and convey. It is 
essential that the idea be not departed from, though various 
shades of meaning may be introduced with effect. It is no 
less important that the idea be completely filled out ; a 
meagre sketch being equally faulty with a superfluous 
abundance of thoughts. The restriction to just fourteen 
lines is an obstacle of itself to the prosecution of a genial 
poetic design. Rapt in his visions of beauty, the poet must 
still not stray beyond this fixed limit, which appears arbi- 
trary enough. Yet these very restrictions tend to compact- 
ness and symmetrical beauty. To a cultivated ear, the 
music of a fine sonnet is not the least pleasing adjunct to 
this form of verse ; nor should we overlook the advantage 
gained to the thought itself by such an harmonious yet 
concise utterance of it. 

Like those minor forms of prose writing, the Letter and 
the Essay, the Sonnet is happy in an unlimited range of sub- 
ject and variety of style, of martial or sentimental, amorous, 
philosophic, familiar and pathetic. It is a miniature ode, 
with less of variety and more formal design ; but it enjoys in 



66 LITERARY STUDIES. 

common with the Ode, the characteristic of a susceptibility 
of conveying strong personal traits, and of rendering itself 
instinct with the most individual subtleties of personal cha- 
racter. But why do we enlarge upon this theme, when 
we have the noble sonnet of Wordsworth^s at hand, at once 
the highest defence and purest eulogium upon sonnets and 
the writers of them ? 

Scorn not the Sonnet ; Critic, you have frowned. 

Mindless of its just honors ; with this key 

Shakspeare unlocked his heart ; the melody 

Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ; 

A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound ; 

Camoens soothed with it an exile's grief; 

The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf 

Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned 

His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp. 

It cheered mild Spenser, called from Faery-land 

To struggle through dark ways ; and when a damp 

Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand 

The thing became a trumpet, whence he blew 

Soul-animating strains — alas, too few ! 

Since the time of Milton, sonnet- writing has been little 
in vogue, until the commencement of the present century. 
The wits of Charles's days were too much occupied with 
libertine songs or political epigrams, to pen thoughtful and 
elaborate poetry. The wits of Queen Anne were too 
courtly and artificial to relish musings on nature, or philo- 
sophical meditations, or amorous conceits, after the old 
fashion. And though it may seem paradoxical to remark 
it, the sonnet was too artificial a form of writing even for 
the most artificial of English Poets, Dryden and Pope. Bui 
its art evinced higher principles of harmony than the 
polished couplet required. We do not recollect a single 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 67 

sonnet of the first, or even second class of excellence, from 
Milton to Thomas Warton. Butler, Rochester, Denham, 
Waller, Roscommon, wrote none : neither did any of the 
religious poets of that age, Quarles, Herbert, Donne, or 
Crashaw. Cowley, in his fine-spun reveries, comes near- 
est to the matter of the best sonnet-writers, but his manner 
is different. If we come to the next epoch of English 
verse, we find not a single sonnet in the writings of Dryden, 
Pope, Swift, Gay, Addison, Steele, &c. It is only in a 
thoughtful and tasteful character, by a lover of meditative 
leisure, an admirer of nature, that the sonnet is ever likely 
to be cultivated. It presents no brilliant points for the 
man of wit; it is tedious and diffuse for the gay man 
of lively talent. It is a form of poetry that would never 
strike the lovers of satire or pictures of artificial manners 
agreeably ; unless, as the pastoral struck the Queen Anne 
poets, as a subject for burlesque. A true reader of the 
sonnet loves not the glare of what passes for strong lines ^ 
brilliant passages. This may be readily seen in the differ- 
ence of taste, and in conception of the poetical character, 
that distinguishes the followers of Wordsworth and of 
Byron. 

Before the time of the Lake Poets and their followers, 
both together, including the finest poets this century has 
produced, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Lamb, and Leigh 
Hunt, we can point to but one true poet who wrote good 
sonnets, almost worthy of Drummond — Thomas Warton. 
Warton was a man of elegant fancy and fine sensibility, 
but without any vigorous imagination or peculiar indivi- 
duality. Yet Hazlitt, much to the surprise of his readers, 
says, that he cannot help preferring his sonnets to any in 
the language. Now, paralleled by Milton or Wordsworth, 



68 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



Warton is feeble; though he is forcible in comparison 
with Bowles. We annex his very best sonnet, as it reads 
to us ; so much superior to the remainder, that it appears 
to have been the work of another hand. 

Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale's Monasticon. 

Deem not devoid of elegance, the sage, 

By fancy's genuine feelings unbeguil'd 

Of painful pedantry the poring child. 

Who turns, of these proud domes, th' historic page, 

Now sunk by time and Henry's fiercer rage. 

Think'st thou the warbling muses never smil'd 

On his lone hours ? Ingenuous views engage 

His thoughts, on themes, unclassic falsely styl'd. 

Intent. While cloister'd piety displays 

Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores 

New manners, and the pomp of elder days. 

Whence culls the pensive bard his pictur'd stores. 

Nor rough, nor barren are the winding ways 

Of hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers. 

During what may be called the Hayley rage, when the 
author of the Triumphs of Temper was esteemed a great 
poet (so barren was the vineyard of genial laborers), a 
band of sonneteers arose, who have deservedly been for- 
gotten. For of all imbecilities, to use a Carlyleism, that 
of writing weak poetry is at once the most pitiable and 
the most reprehensible. The poetic offspring, worthily 
begotten, thrives even amid the bleak freezings of Neglect: 
but a puny poem, like a puny child, rarely lives long, and 
only usurps the place of something better. We may 
speak thus, at the present time, of the attempts of Miss 
Seward and Charlotte Smith, since we have been treated 
to more delicate cates and fed on heavenly food. Later 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 69 

Still, and nearer to our own time, we have instances of 
men of poetic taste, though utterly devoid of all poetic ge- 
nius, who have failed signally in the sonnet, and who are 
only known from their general connection with literature. 
The Rev. W. Lisle Bowles is better known from Cole- 
ridge's early admiration of his sonnets, and from his stake 
in the Pope controversy, than from any one other reason. 
In the latter he failed to gain his cause, though on the right 
side. Coleridge is said to have transcribed his sonnets 
forty times in the course of eighteen months in order to 
make presents of them to his schoolfellows ; we can only 
account for it by the fact, that many inferior authors have, 
sometimes, been more suggestive than their masters, and 
it may have been a mere vagary of a boy of genius. 
Coleridge's own sonnet, addressed to Bowles, is richly 
worth the whole of Bowles's sonnets put together. George 
Dyer, the friend of Lamb the antiquary (whose character 
Lamb has so admirably depicted), the historian of Cam- 
bridge, the scholar and gentle companion, will be known 
to posterity solely through the medium of his friend's ori- 
ginal humor and delicious irony, which he so widely mis- 
took. Leigh Hunt, though a graceful narrator, a charming 
essayist, and a lively critic ; a friend of poets, and in other 
walks, a pleasing poet himself, has yet been unable to do 
justice to his fine genius in the sonnet. His friend, Charles 
Lamb, too, has done his best things in prose. But among 
the few sonnets left by the inimitable Elia, occur three 
perfect specimens — that on Cambridge, and those on Work, 
and Leisure. 

Lamb's latest publisher, Moxon, has written some very 
tolerable sonnets — for a bookseller ; though they are tainted 
with the general defect of feebleness. The Hon. R. Monck- 



70 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



ton Milnes, the parliamentary poet, may be ranked in the 
same category. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, are 
the writers of the genuine sonnet, in this nineteenth cen- 
tury, and by far the best poets. The majestic tone and 
deep feeling of the first, the learned invention and univer- 
sality of talent of the second, and the exuberant fancy of 
the third, can fitly be measured by none but the same 
standards that we apply to the old Elizabethan poets and to 
Milton. 

Wordsworth is now confessedly the finest sonnet writer 
in the world, equalling in many sonnets, even the majesty, 
the tenderness and Attic grace of Milton in a few. Words- 
worth's copiousness is remarkable, and at the same time 
his richness of thought and expression. A mechanical wri- 
ter might turn out sonnets by the dozen, but of what value, 
we would inquire. Wordsworth's are admirable, perfectly 
appropriate, and harmonious as the breathings of Apollo's 
flute. Occasionally, he blows a noble blast, as from a silver 
trumpet of surpassing power ; but his favorite style may 
be likened to the music of a chamber-oro-an, thouj^h he can 
also make the massive pealing organ of the cathedral blow. 
His range is universal ; moral, patriotic, tender, domestic. 
He is meditative, playful, familiar. We should be ashamed 
to quote specimens of Wordsworth, were he not really still 
a poet unknown to the mass, even of educated readers. 
There are ten times the copies of Byron, Moore, or Scott, 
sold (at least) to where there is one of Wordsworth, who 
is worth all three. 

Of the different series, we prefer the Miscellaneous Son- 
nets, and next to them, the sonnets dedicated to Liberty ; 
the Ecclesiastical sonnets are less interesting to the gene- 
ral reader, and written with less power, but they add a 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 71 

new and peculiar grace to the history of the British Church, 
and ought to he enshrined in the hearts of its members. 

The following should form the guiding maxims of the 
patriot, and evince a noble sympathy with political liberty 
and individual greatness. 



Milton ! thou should'st be living at this hour ; 
England hath need of thee ; she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters ; altar, sword and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wreath of hall and bower, 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower. 
Of inward happiness, we are selfish men ; 
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 
Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart : 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea, 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free. 
So didst thou travel on life's common way. 
In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay, 

XV. 

Great men have been among us : hands that penned 

And tongues that uttered wisdom better none : 

The later Sidney, Marvel, Harrington, 

Young Vane, and others who called Milton friend. 

These moralists could act and comprehend : 

They knew how genuine glory was put on ; 

Taught us how rightfully a nation shone 

In splendor ; what strength was, that would not bend 

But in magnanimous meekness. France, 'tis strange 

Has brought forth no such souls as we had then. 

Perpetual emptiness ! unceasing change ! 

No single volume paramount, no code, 

No master spirit, no determined road ; 

But equally a want of books and men ! 



72 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Of the Miscellaneous Sonnets, two-thirds of which are 
pure gold, we quote only the beautiful sonnet on the depar. 
ture of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples. 

A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, 

Nor of the setting Sun's pathetic light 

Engender'd, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height. 

Spirits of power, assembled there, complain 

For kindred power departing from their sight ; 

While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, 

Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 

Lift up your hearts, ye mourners ! for the might 

Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes : 

Blessings and prayers in nobler retinue 

Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows, 

Follow this wondrous potentate. Be true. 

Ye winds of ocean and the midland sea. 

Wafting your charge to soft Parthenope ! 

Coleridge wrote but few sonnets, but they are among the 
most admirable of the fragments of his poetic genius. 
Most of them are political, celebrating some one of his fa- 
vorite heroes, Burke, Priestley, Erskine, Sheridan, Koscius- 
ko, Lafayette. The remainder are of a wholly personal 
nature, full either of early aspiration, or maturer despon- 
dency ; cheerful and ardent, or instinct with a mild yet 
manly melancholy. The two we extract, are typical of 
the different traits we have mentioned. 

Here is that noble address, 

To the Author of the Robbers. 

Schiller ! that hour I would have wished to die. 
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent. 
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent, 
That fearful voice, a famished father's cry — 
Lest in some after moment, aught more mean 



OLD AND LATER ENGLISH SONNETS. 73 

Might stamp me mortal ! A triumphant shout 
Black horror screamed, and all her goblin rout 
Diminished shrunk from the more withering scene ! 
Ah, bard ! tremendous in simplicity ! 
Could I behold thee in thy loftier mood 
Wandering at eve with finely-frenzied eye 
Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood ! 
Awhile with mute awe gazing I would brood : 
Then weep aloud in a wild ecstasy. 

This in a different vein. It is in reply "to a friend 
who asked, how 1 felt when the nurse first presented my 
infant to me." 

Charles ! my slow heart was only sad, when first 
I scanned that face of feeble infancy : 
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst 
All I had been, and all my child might be ! 
But when I saw it on its mother's arm, 
And hanging at her bosom (she the while 
Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile), 
Then I was thrilled, and melted, and most warm 
Impressed a father's kiss : and all beguiled 
Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, 
I seemed to see an angel form appear — 
'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild ! 
So for the mother'' s sake the child was deaVy 
And dearer was the mother for the child. 

With Keats we close our very slight sketch of writers of 
the sonnet. A late article in Arcturus Magazine (Dec, 
1841), has done him true poetic justice. To this delicate 
appreciation of the young English Poet, as Hunt affection- 
ately calls him, we can add nothing, but only contribute a 
hearty assent. The hour has come at last for Keats, that 
always comes to the true poet. A brother bard (J. R. 

4 



74 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Lowell), whose first volume contains passages and poems 
Keats would have been willing to acknowledge, and whose 
own delicate genius enables him to appreciate a cognate 
talent, has done honor to the English bard in stanzas, that 
put to the blush all prose criticisms. Poets should criticize 
each other, or rather be the most intelligent admirers of 
their respective talents. A critic is " of understanding all 
compact," and wants imagination to relish the finest 
touches. " The words of Mercury are harsh after the 
songs of Apollo." 



IX. 

JEREMY TAYLOR, 
THE SPENSER OF DIVINITY, 



A POET should be the critic of Jeremy Taylor, for he was 
one himself, and hence needs a poetic mind for his inter- 
preter and eulogist. Bald criticism becomes still more 
barren (by contrast) when exercised on the flowery genius 
of the prince of pulpit orators. Taylor thought in pictures, 
and his ideas were shadowed out in lively images of beauty. 
His fancy colored his understanding, which rather painted 
elaborate metaphors, " long drawn out," than analyzed the 
complexity of a problem, or conducted the discussion of a 
topic, by logical processes. The material world furnished 
his stock of similes. He drew on it for illustrations, rather 
than seek them in the workings of his own mind. His 
descriptions are almost palpable. They have an air of 
reality. His landscape is enveloped in a warm and glow- 
ing atmosphere ; his light is " from heaven." His style 
is rich and luxuriant. He is all grace, beauty, melody. 
He does not appear so anxious to get at the result of an ar- 
gument, to fix the certainty of a proposition, as to give the 
finest coloring to a received sentiment. He is more descrip- 
tive and less speculative. He reposes on the lap of beauty. 



76 LITERARY STUDIES. 

He revels in her creations. The thirst of his soul was for 
the beautiful. This was with him almost synonymous 
with the good — "the first good and the first fair." Is it 
not so ? Is not the highest truth the highest form of 
beauty ? Our common idea of beauty is more sensual and 
tinged with earthliness. But the platonic and spiritual 
conception is nobler and truer. 

There was a period when the volumes of Taylor lay 
comparatively neglected : when the Blair taste was dominant. 
This sensible but cold critic does not even refer to Taylor 
in his lecture on pulpit eloquence. The present race of 
critics, unlike Blair, are for elevating Taylor as the very 
first of orators. Of pulpit orators, he is, indeed, the Chry- 
sostom ; but Burke holds the first, the highest place of all 
orators. With the poet's imagination, he had also the 
logician's art and the deep reflection of the philosopher. 
Burke had less multifarious acquisition, and his intellect 
worked all the better. Taylor had a vast quantity of use- 
less learning, which had the ill-effect of inducing a certain 
laxity of belief. I mean laxity in a good sense. He was 
too credulous. His faith as well as his memory was 
equally tenacious of all statements, whether well or ill- 
founded. Bishop Heber notices this individual character 
of Taylor in his life. 

Undoubtedly, Taylor is a first-rate genius of the descrip- 
tive kind. His strengtli lay in that ; and his range, too, 
was universal. He painted every scene and every vary- 
ing phase of any one. He is Claude, Rubens, Rembrandt 
and Raphael combined. He unites softness, richness, 
depth of shadow, and pure beauty. 

Taylor has been called the " Shakspeare of Divinity" — 
a parallel that requires some limitation. If, by this, it be 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 77 

meant that, compared with other preachers, he had a richer 
fancy, greater copiousness of poetic sentiment, and an un- 
equalled profusion of beautiful metaphor, the praise is just ; 
but if it be intended to express that, like Shakspeare, he 
was gifted with an union of wonderful and various powers, 
almost superhuman, the criticism is extravagant, if not ab- 
surd. For, in his printed works, we can find not a gleam 
of wit or humor — scarcely any talent for portrait-painting 
— no profound depth of reflection — no nice observation of 
real life. We say this with no intention of undervaluing 
Taylor ; but only to show the folly of any close comparison 
between him and Shakspeare. We would rather say, Tay- 
lor was the Spenser of Divinity. In a former criticism, 
we have called Temple a sort of prose Spenser. This 
phrase would apply with much greater force to Taylor, 
who was really a poet in prose. With Spenser, Taylor is 
eminently a descriptive writer. His imagination is pic- 
torial ; and, although without the allegory of Spenser, he 
has the same bland amenity of sentiment — the same untir- 
ing particularity of description — the same angelic purity 
of thought — the same harmonious structure of composition. 
Taylor is the painter : inferior to Barrow in point of 
reason, and to Clark in reasoning ; without a tithe of South's 
wit or epigrammatic smartness : less ingenious than Donne : 
he has a fancy and style far more beautiful than any prose 
writer before his time, and perhaps since. It has been 
called " unmeasured poetry." The Edinburgh Review 
and Coleridge (critics wide apart) have joined in pro- 
nouncing his writings more truly poetic than most of the 
odes and epics that have been produced in Europe since 
his day. And Hazlitt (surest critic of all) quotes a fine 
passage from Beaumont, which is apparently a translation 



78 LITERARY STUDIES. 

of Taylor's prose into verse, and made, too, merely by 
occasional transposition of the words from the order in 
which they originally stood. Taylor is, therefore, con- 
fessedly a master of poetical prose. This term is sometimes 
used by way of dubious praise, since most writing of the 
kind is a wretched farrago of such tinsel and faded orna- 
ment as would disgrace Rag Fair. Taylor's composition 
is of quite a different grain. His style is naturally poetic, 
from the character of his mind j he had that poetic sensi- 
bility of feeling that saw beauty and deep meaning in 
everything. His imagination colored the commonest 
object on which it lighted, as the bow of promise throws 
its tints over all creation ; through this, as a veil, every 
object appeared bright and blooming, like the flowers of 
spring, or dark and terrible, like the thunder-cloud of sum- 
mer. Its general hue was mild and gentle ; he had a 
more genial feeling for beauty than for grandeur, though 
his awful description of the Last Judgment is stamped with 
the sublime force of Michael Angelo, or rather, like Rem- 
brandt's shadows, terrible with excess of gloom. In this 
grand picture are collected all the images of terror and 
dismay, fused into a powerful whole by his so-potent art. 
It is first a solemn anthem — a version of the monkish can- 
tide : then you hear (in imagination) the deep bass note 
of the last thunder that shall ever peal through the sky. 
You are almost blinded by the lightnings that gleam in his 
style. Presently, a horrid shriek of despair (the accumu- 
lated wailing of millions of evil spirits) rises on the 
aftrighted ear. And anon, the trumpet with a silver 
sound is blown several times, and all is still. With what 
a subtle power this master plays on the conscience of his 
readers ! He makes the boldest tremble : he magnifies, he 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 79 

reiterates, until the best of men shall think himself a fellow 
of the vilest ! 

Such, however, is not a scene congenial to Taylor's 
temper. In his description he most affects the tender and 
pathetic notes of humanity. He plays admirably on every 
chord of passion, but on some much oftener and more art- 
fully than on others. He is both " a son of thunder and a 
son of consolation." With all his powers of terrifying the 
soul, he most loves to entreat its gratitude to God and the 
practice of religion. He takes delight in painting the in- 
nocence of childhood, the purity of virgins, the sacred 
mystery of marriage, the gentle voice of pity, the mercy of 
our Father, the love of his Son. 

His landscape is oftener quiet and in repose, than savage 
or deserted. His favorite breezes are rather zephyrs, than 

The wind Euroclydon — 
The storm wind. 

His florid genius, like his sweet disposition, delighted in 
heavenly lays, and doubtless his piety was not a little the 
offspring of his temperament and genius. 

Taylor, in his pictures, further resembled Spenser in 
the prolixity of his style — dwelling on minute points and 
carefully finishing every trait. He had none of Milton's 
concise force, that painted a picture by an epithet or a line. 
If Taylor had the building of Pandemonium, he would 
have occupied six times the space Milton took for its con- 
struction. Milton made it to "arise like an exhalation;" 
Taylor would have expanded the line into a page, wliere 
each member of the sentence would have formed a series 
of steps leading from the foundation to the dome of the In- 
fernal Hall. 



80 LITERARY STUDIES. 

It may be proper here to notice a peculiarity of Taylor's 
illustrations — they are almost always for ornament ; he 
does not employ a simile to clench his argument ; he does 
not make even his fancy logical ; but describes and paints 
for the pleasure of the picture. His similes, so delightful 
in the reading, must have been intolerably long for delivery. 
Public speaking requires greater compactness of mind than 
Taylor possessed, and yet we hear of his wonderful suc- 
cess, which was not slightly heightened by a beautiful 
person, a face " like an angel," and an elocution that 
ravished all hearers with its swelling cadences and sweet 
intonations. 

Taylor, in his frequent and curious quotations, is almost 
a Burton. A reason for this deference to foreign testimony 
may be gathered from the fact of the respect for authority 
cherished by the early divines. Just loosed from the 
Church of Rome, it was but natural they should cling to 
the first vouchers of the truth, the primitive defenders of 
the faith. Modern free-thinking and the fashionable doc- 
trine of independency of opinion had not yet made those 
morning stars of the church to rely too completely on their 
own internal light — they rather reflected and gave back 
the light from above. 



CHURCH MUSIC. 



" I think he hath not a mind well-tempered, whose zeal is not inflamed by i 
heavenly anthem." — Owen Feltham. 



There is no music like church music, nor any songs of 
equal excellence with the songs of Zion. Light, airy- 
strains delight the ear and enervate the sense, but reach 
not the soul ; dull, mournful tones induce melancholy and 
sadness ; but the songs of praise and thanksgiving, of ex- 
ultant hope and religious joy, of repentance and gratitude, 
touch the heart more nearly, affect the soul in her inmost 
recesses, and descend into the very depths of a troubled 
and contrite spirit. The hopeful Christian, too, is cheered 
by devout music, breathing peace and rest. And he must 
be a most indifferent auditor who can listen, unmoved, to 
any species of church music, of whatever sect, or to what- 
ever degree of refinement it attains. For my own part, I 
love all, from the simplest Methodist hymn to the richest 
cathedral vesper of the Roman Catholic Church : and I 
believe there is a species of pure, devotional feeling that 
cannot fitly be told in language, nor manifested in any 
other way, that is exhibited in music. Prayer and preach- 
ing have their fit place, and are of essential importance in 
divine worship ; but praise must not be absent. Psalmody 

4* 



82 LITERARY STUDIES. 

is prayer set to music ; and the majestic anthem is no less 
than a more elevated form of address to the Almighty Fa- 
ther. External harmony is but the exponent of a finer 
internal sense of order and design ; and that, we are taught, 
is " Heaven's first law." Without organ music, and the 
vocal accompaniment of a choir, the services of the church 
appear shorn of a large portion of their dignity and beauty, 
and wanting in an important feature. This feeling we 
are happy to share with the master spirits of our church, 
the testimonials of some of whom, to the efficacy and fasci- 
nation of this Christian Art, we shall presently enumerate. 
We call this a Christian Art, and such it certainly is. 
In the middle age, and just before the revival of learning, 
when the modern arts first took their rise and origin, all of 
the arts at present styled the fine arts, were consecrated 
wholly to the service of the Church. The architecture of 
that period was the Gothic, especially adapted to churches, 
though afterwards employed in other buildings, the castel- 
lated mansion of the noble, and the palace of the king. 
The first modern paintings were of our Saviour, and 
the Virgin Mary, and the Apostles, and the scenes and 
incidents of the Old and New Testaments. The music 
was choral and religious ; the orisons of the monk, the 
matins of the friar, the mass and vespers of the chapel. 
The eloquence was purely and almost restrictedly Episco- 
pal, or Missionary. Even the early Drama had its first 
beginning in the representation of Mysteries and Moralities. 
And to bring down the illustrations to our own day, we 
find Christianity the prominent symbol of tiie Arts ; or 
rather the Arts, the peculiar ministers of Religion. Thus 
we still see no nobler edifices than those consecrated to the 
worship of the true God ; St. Peter's, St. Paul's, N6tre 



CHURCH MUSIC. 83 

Dame, the Madelaine, York Minster, and the noble churches 
of Gernmany. The finest paintings of Raphael, of Guido, 
of Corregio, of Titian, of Murillo, of Rubens, of Rem- 
brandt, and of Leonardo da Vinci, are from Scripture sub- 
jects, and themes sacred to the Christian. Sacred music, 
in the hands of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven, is beyond 
all other music ; and it should be our peculiar pride, that 
much of our noble church music came fresh from the 
glowing hand and seraphic ear of the immortal Handel. 
In point of eloquence, no oratory yet has equalled that of 
the pulpit. We speak advisedly (with Taylor, and Massil- 
lon, and Whitfield, and, greatest of all orators, St. Paul, in 
our eye). We can say, as we know, nothing, of the fa- 
thers and Roman Catholic doctors ; but unless a general 
conspiracy has arisen to pervert the truth, their writings 
must contain a mine of rich thoughts, elaborate reasonings, 
and brilliant fancies. But of the English divines we can 
speak from some acquaintance ; and feel amply warranted 
in declaring, that they have (as a body) never been equal- 
led, in kind or degree, in point of natural or acquired gifts; 
embracing the wide circle of eloquence, argument, wit, 
fancy, erudition, and research. The noblest poetry of not 
only modern times, but of all times, is deeply devout. The 
greatest epic the world has produced, is founded on sacred 
story ; and the writings of all true poets have ever been 
instinct with a spirit of awful reverence, of charity, and 
comprehensive love, and of sympathy with the good, the 
beautiful, and the true ; and this is Christianity. We have 
digressed from the main point, and yet not wandered into 
any very irrelevant train of thought. For the whole sub- 
ject is closely connected, in all its parts : and what is true 



84 LITERARY STUDIES. 

of music as a Christian art, is equally true of the other arts ; 
of architecture, painting, eloquence, and poetry. 

The elegant Home has left a sermon on Church Music, 
which we have not been able to procure ; but which we 
recommend to our readers. The finest thing, however, we 
have met with on this subject, is that magnificent passage 
of Hooker,* which may be readily turned to, but is too long 
for transcription. 

Feltham, and Sir William Temple, have both hit upon 
the same quotation, a notion of the Fathers, that God loves 
not him who loves not music ; and they taught, that a love 
of music was a species of predestinated assurance of a 
man's acceptance with heaven. Of music, and hymns, 
and lyres, and the trumpet, and golden harps, we read in 
Scripture ; and that there are hallelujahs in heaven : 
and though some blaspheming wit sneeringly asked if 
heaven were a singing-school, we may affirm that, amidst 
the choicest incense offered to the adorable Trinity, may 
very reasonably be included a celestial harmony of voice 
and instrument, such as mortal ears have never heard, and 
such as human imaginations may not dare to conceive. 
But let us see what others, and great names too, have to 
say on this topic. We shall adduce only those instances 
occurring to us readily, and omit many fine passages from 
authors whose books we may not happen to have at hand. 

Of Church Music, thus spoke that fine poet and true 
Christian, Dr. Donne : "And oh, the power of church mu- 
sic ! that harmony, added to this hymn, has raised the af- 
fections of my heart, and quickened my graces of zeal and 
gratitude ; and I observe, that I always return from paying 

* Book v., § 38. 



CHURCH MUSIC. 85 

this public duty of prayer and praise to God, with an inex- 
pressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave 
the world." Herbert truly loved church music. We are 
told by Izaak Walton, that " His chiefest recreation was 
music ; in which heavenly Art he was a most excellent 
master ; and did himself compose many divine hymns and 
anthems, which he set and sung to his lute or viol. And 
though he was a lover of retiredness, yet his love to music 
was such, that he went usually twice every week, on cer- 
tain appointed days, to the cathedral church in Salisbury ; 
and at his return would say, ' That his time spent in prayer 
and cathedral music, elevated his soul, and was Jus heaven 
upon earth.' " Nor was he content with a mere conversa- 
tional declaration of this feeling ; but has given a perma- 
nent form to the feeling in a strain of pure, devotional har- 
mony : 

CHURCH MUSIC. 

Sweetest of sweets, I thatik you. When displeasure 

Did through my body wound my mind, 
You took me thence : and in your house of pleasure 

A dainty lodging me assign'd. 

Now I in you, without a body move. 

Rising and falling with your wings. 
We both together sweetly live and love, 

Yet say sometimes, " God help poor kings," 

Comfort, I'll die ; for if you part from me. 

Sure I shall do so, and much more ; 
But if I travel in your company, 

You know the way to heaven's door. 

The author of Paradise Lost, of Comus, and the Areo- 
pagitica, has left on record his admiration of church music. 



86 LITERARY STUDIES. 

He was a master of the art of music, and played daily on 
the organ ; and one of the chief traits of his glorious epic 
is the admirable adaptation of sound to sense, an exquisite 
sense of harmony and rhythm. Who can forget that rich 
passage in II Penseroso, rising like " a steam of rich dis- 
tilled perfumes." 

But let my due feet never fail. 

To walk the studious cloisters pale, 

And love the high embowered roof. 

With antic pillars massy proof. 

And storied windows richly dight. 

Casting a dim religious light. 

There let the pealing organ blow 

To the full voicd quire below. 

In service high and anthems clear. 

As may ivith siveetness, through mine ear, 

Dissolve me into ecstasies. 

And bring all heav'n before mine eyes. 

Truly Milton, though in his creed a Puritan, or rather 
an Independent (of his own sort), and in his politics a Re- 
publican, was still, in his poetry, captivated by the romance 
and splendor of the Roman Catholic Church. Macaulay 
has, with great nicety, hit off the distinction. "The illu- 
sions," says that brilliant declaimer, " which captivated 
his imagination, never impaired his reasoning powers. 
The statesman was proof against the splendor, the solem- 
nity, and the romance, which enchanted the poet. Any 
person who will contrast the sentiments expressed in his 
Treatises on Prelacy, with the exquisite lines (above 
quoted) on Ecclesiastical Architecture and Music, in the 
Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will 
understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, 



CHURCH MUSIC. 87 

more than anything else, raises his character in our esti- 
mation, because it shows how many private tastes and 
feelings he sacrificed in order to do what he considered his 
duty to mankind. It is the very struggle of the noble Othello, 
His heart relents ; but his hand is firm. He does naught 
in hate, but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver 
before he destroys her." Four excellent witnesses, admir- 
able as Poets and Christians, are enough to confirm the 
integrity of our proposition ; and we have adduced the 
testimony of Hooker, of Donne, of Herbert, and of Milton. 

Perhaps, after all, there is a nobler music than what is 
commonly recognized as such ; we mean " the music of 
speech," the music of a rich, varied, and expressive elocu- 
tion. Man has not been able to contrive any instrument 
of equal power and versatility, with that natural organ 
bestowed upon him by his Maker. The human voice is 
more complicated and exquisite than the great Harlsem 
Organ, or the finest Cremona Violin. It is the mastery of 
art to approach nature ; but here we have nature above 
the imitation of art. We are old-fashioned enough to love 
good reading, which is much rarer than good singing. 
We have now-a-days few Duchets (the name of the clergy, 
man of whom Wirt wrote witli such enthusiasm) : and it 
must be confessed that, to the generality of clergymen, 
liowever learned or eloquent, or amiable for private vir- 
tues, the censure of Addison still applies, which was 
levelled at the slovenly, careless, and irreverent perform- 
ance of the most sacred duty of the priest — Prayer. 



XI. 



MR, braham; 



When we first heard Mr. Braham in his opening Sacred 
Concert at the Tabernacle, we were sadly disappointed. 
We thought then, as we do now, that he overlaid the majes- 
tic simplicity of sacred music with a profusion of useless 
and unmeaning flourishes, mere tricks of voice and execu- 
tion, cadences, trills, and absurd repetitions. Wonderful 
power, the more astonishing at his advanced age, and 
equally wonderful science we could not help acknowledg- 
ing, but his pathos appeared labored and his enthusiasm 
mechanical. We did recognize a portion of the fine scorn 
Lamb spoke of in that magnificent piece, " Thou shalt 
dash them to pieces," wherein his contemptuous tones 
were jerked out with the same force that the fretted waves 
break and storm upon a rock in the raging sea. After- 
wards at the theatre, on each occasion of our visits there, 
we were equally dissatisfied. The very indifferent acting 
was not relieved by any very extraordinary singing. It was 
the extravagance and (paradoxical, yet true) the constraint 
of the Italian opera. But a few evenings ago, at the Stuy ve- 
sant Institute, we at last discovered the secret of Braham's 

* 1841. 



MR. BRAHAM. 89 

powers. It is not only the amazing extent, or clearness, or 
melody of his voice, nor the rapid execution, nor the bril- 
liant expression merely, but (as in all men of true genius) 
it lies in the harmonious sympathy between the spirit of 
the man and the talent of the singer. He sang admirably, 
the noble heroic songs from Scott and Burns, not only be- 
cause he sang with power, but also with love. He then 
and there sang out himself, to speak after the manner of 
the Germans. The honest, hearty, manly old strains, 
heroic or naval, or even moral, of England and Scotland, 
are the true songs for Braham to sing. Before we heard 
Braham, we fancied to our eye a sort of poetical High 
Priest in Israel, a majestic figure of a man uttering tones 
of unearthly depth and beauty, in a style austere, grand, 
and solemn. But Old Hundred was the only specimen of 
the kind Mr. Braham gave of himself to any advantage. 
To hear Braham in " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled," 
or " the Blue Bonnets are over the Border," in which his 
frequent animated calls sound like the acute report of a 
rifle ; or " The Last Words of Marmion," where he displays 
the greater variety, from great force to fine tenderness, 
slowness and vivacity, spirit and sentiment, we say, to 
hear these is to hear the finest singing that is to be heard 
at the present day. The rich philosophy and fine poetry 
of " A Man's a Man for a' that," was delivered in a proud 
strain, evincing the generous spirit of the singer. The 
hearty naval songs of old England are great favorites 
with Braham. He sings them with all the joyaunce of a 
jolly Jack Tar, that creature of impulse and heart, and 
with a spirit of defiance at fortune, and a manly cordiality 
of feeling, that smack of the children of the sea. Mere 
sentimental songs Mr. Braham sings badly. He has a 



90 LITERARY STUDIES. 

taste and a faculty above them ; he should " chaunt the 
old heroic ditty o'er," and leave Moore and Haynes Bay- 
ley to the lesser lights of the hour. He has force and 
elevation, but little of mere elegance or softness — he is 
the Jupiter Tonans, and not the graceful Mercurius. 



XII. 
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF 

PHILIP QUARLL. 



This delightful story, the favorite of the child's library 
about a century ago, has now fallen into almost entire 
obscurity, from which we trust a late London re-publica- 
tion of the book may revive it. It is a designed and pal- 
pable imitation of Robinson Crusoe, the popularity of 
which led to a swarm of imitations, amongst which the 
above and the Adventures of Peter Wilkins are by far the 
most ingenious, and so full of freshness and invention as to 
deserve to pass for originals. 

^' The Adventures of the English Hermit" were first 
published, in chapters, in a weekly newspaper, called the 
Public Intelligencer, shortly after the appearance of Robin- 
son Crusoe, which, in like manner, had been printed in a 
paper with which Defoe was connected. So we see our 
supposed modern fashion of continuing a work of fiction 
through successive numbers of a periodical is by no means 
so original a plan as we had supposed in the hands of 
Hook, Dickens, Marryatt, and a host of their copyists. 
Our own impression had led us to believe that Launcelot 



92 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Greaves, Smollett's least admirable work, was the first 
' English novel that had appeared in the pages of a periodi- 
cal, but here we have a precedent a hundred years pre- 
vious. Like Peter Wilkins, and Gaudentio di Lucca, the 
author of Philip Quarll is unknown. One who signs him- 
self Edward Dorrington, a nom du plume, we suppose, is 
the apparent compiler of the book ; but we have, now-a- 
days, seen revealed all the arts of publication, and know 
very well that Editor often means an author who palms off 
his own writings as the lucubrations of other people. 
These scanty facts we glean from the preface to the late 
edition, and they afford all the actual information we have 
been able to collect on the subject. Dunlop is entirely 
silent, in his history of Fiction, as to the very existence of 
Philip Quarll, though he mentions Peter Wilkins with 
praise ; in which said history he has finished the depart- 
ment of English fiction with comparative indifference and 
in the briefest manner. 

To confess the truth, we have ourselves only a short 
time since met with the Adventures, and feel that we have, 
by so late a reading, been deprived of the pleasant retro- 
spections to which the reperusal of a book of this sort al- 
ways gives rise. There are classic works which, if not 
read in early childhood, lose their principal charm, which 
consists of a pleasure connected with early associations, 
such as are peculiar in themselves, and which no other 
period of our life may afford us. In this class of books we 
place all the fairy tales and voyages imaginaires, as Gulli- 
ver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Wilkins, and Philip 
Quarll (Gaudentio di Lucca is the single book of the kind 
above a mere childish imagination, but worth a text-book 
on ethics for the boyish youtli). Pure allegory is best 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 93 

relished then. We read Pilgrim's Progress with con- 
stant delight before the age of ten years, but have never 
been able to get through five pages since ; and the Holy 
War we give up in despair, being quite past relishing the 
glories of that mortal combat between the Flesh and the 
Devil. Oriental tales, as the Arabian Nights and Persian 
Tales, are very captivating to a fancy delighted with gaudy 
pictures, and a taste adulterated by the crudities of igno- 
rance ; so, too, for a different reason, are startling matter- 
of-fact relations — as the adventures of Munchausen, or 
Baron Trenck. All of these are really beneficial to 
young minds ; but the class of books we consider most 
useful for children are combinations of books of adventures 
and matter-of-fact relations, as Quarll's adventures, where 
a child is not only impressed with generous sentiments, 
and taught to follow a manly model of character, but also 
learns, and in the pleasantest manner, something of geo- 
graphy and of natural history. A book like this is better 
than a sermon or a moral lecture, for with delight it instils 
truth, and gives an impulse to the affections, while it 
stimulates the perceptions of the understanding. 

To instruct children to advantage, we must charm their 
imaginations and touch their hearts ; through these ave- 
nues we excite the natural piety instinct in the most falli- 
ble of human creatures, and awaken the dormant love of 
virtue, which (and not that accursed doctrine of natural 
depravity), is the true birthright of man. By these means, 
too, we invigorate and enlighten the reason, the master 
faculty, and thus in effect gain far more, and in a more 
pleasing manner, than if we had gone directly to work, and 
frightened or stupified our little pupils into the practice of 
a decorous behavior and the acquisition of the mere signs 



94 LITERARY STUDIES. 

of knowledge. We are sorry to see the present race of 
writers of books for children adopting the unwise course 
of pragmatically insisting upon a didactic manner in works 
of fiction. In the midst of all the cants of the day, we are 
in danwr of beinir surfeited with the cant of useful know- 
ledge, and the cant of human perfectibility. Certainly all 
knowledge (even of the worst sort) has its uses ; but for 
the love of variety, my masters, let us have a little (so 
called) jiselcss knowledge. It will at least serve as a 
relief to the mind ; and of goodness, though we cannot 
have too much, we beg there may be less talking and more 
performance. We did not wonder that Harriet Martineau 
could bore children with tirades upon frugality and the 
circle of domestic virtues, but we are sorry to see even 
Miss Sedgwick and charming Mary Howitt getting to be 
too moral by half; and, to crown our surprise. Captain 
Marryatt is overriding the useful knowledge hobby at such 
a pace, that we fear he will soon be found floundering in 
the dirt. In the midst of all this, we are gratified to bring 
into notice an old work with a new interest, to present our 
juvenile acquaintance with a new treasure to their former 
literary store, an accession they will not readily renounce. 
Our first acquaintance with Philip Quarll arose out of 
the encomiums we met upon it in two or three passages of 
Leigh Hunt's writings, and the favor with which it was re- 
ceived by that glorious circle which met at Lamb's Wednes- 
day evening parties. What fascinated three generations of 
children might, we logically inferred, attract a fourth ; and 
so we took up the work with the intention of saying some- 
thing about it, if we were so fortunate as to catch the spirit 
of it. This intention was confirmed and excused (for we 
foolishly enough imagined the readers of the Boston Mis- 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 95 

cellany might consider a notice of an old child's book too 
trifling for their regard), by the article of Hunt* on Peter 
Wilkins, a work of similar character, and of which we 
have something to say before we stop. Of Philip Quarll, 
beyond a couple of sentences or so, we have seen a criti- 
cism nowhere, and have the ground, a virgin soil, entirely 
to ourselves. 

Let us premise that in our critical capacity we write to 
the parents ; genius alone can write up to the purity of the 
innocent child. We may have our say, and talk learnedly 
enough, but it is Mr. Hawthorne who can present his 
Fancy's Show-box, and fix the roving eye of childhood as 
by a magic spell. As we love children, however, we shall 
be glad to act even as subordinate to their best teachers, 
the father and mother, they to whom they owe life and the 
fostering care of it, gratitude inferior only to that we all 
owe to the Father of our fathers, and the merciful protector 
of their offspring. 

To make an end of what seems to be getting intermina- 
ble, we come at once to our new acquaintance. The Ad- 
ventures of Philip Quarll are prefaced by a long and very 
agreeable account of the discovery of the same Philip 
Quarll, by the aforesaid Mr. Dorrington. Our present no- 
lice might be entitled a discovery of the discovery of Philip 
Quarll, to which is added the adventures, &c. Mr. Dor- 
rington, we are told, was a British merchant, who on his 
return to England from a voyage of mercantile adventure, 
by accident made the discovery of an island in the South 
Sea, which had been supposed uninhabited, and even unap- 
proachable for landing, on account of the difficulties of 

* The Seer, xxxi,. Part First. 



96 LITERARY STUDIES. 

access to it ; but on which was found an English hermit, 
who had lived there solitary and alone (as Mr. Benton 
might add), not only conveniently, and with comfort, but 
perfectly resigned and happy, for the space of fifty years. 
The account of the discovery includes a description of the 
dress, habitation, and utensils of Quarll, and a long report 
of the conversation held with him. Of the dress, manner 
of life, &c., we will only remark a close similarity to the 
minuteness and particularity of the descriptions and narra- 
tive of Robinson Crusoe. This, and the internal evidence 
of the story, and its conduct, induces us to suspect Defoe, 
himself, of the authorship of the book; a supposition highly 
probable, when we consider the demand for that class of writ- 
ings, excited by the Crusoe of the same author, his wonderful 
copiousness, and his natural desire to enhance the value of 
the first book, by an imitation of it. This is a mere supposi- 
tion of our own ; yet analogous circumstances, a repetition 
of incidents even, lead us to suspect that by chance we 
may have hit upon the real author. The very conceal- 
ment of the author's name might be employed as an argu- 
ment on our side of the question. Defoe had nothing to 
gain after writing Robinson Crusoe, by copying himself; 
and then the similarity is so strong in all points, down to 
the very homeliness, and yet expressiveness of the style, 
that we cannot think it a mere copy, since, at the same 
time, it discovers so much internal force and naturalness, 
which a mere copyist could not be likely to possess. Be 
that as it may, Quarll is Crusoe slightly altered. He is 
older, naturally more devout, and a greater lover of soli- 
tude ; but equally a lover of animals, and of nature, 
equally expert as a mechanic, and planter ; like Robinson 
Crusoe, cast by a shipwreck on a desert island, like him 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 97 

recovering the most necessary articles from the wreck. 
There are a few points of dissimilarity. Crusoe is trans- 
ported at the thought of returning home, while Quarll will 
not leave his beloved retreat. The former hermit is con- 
tinually in dread of the Anthropophagi, while the latter is 
only once visited by two thievish Indians, who fly at his 
approach. Quarll has no man Friday, but a favorite mon- 
key, Beaufidelle. The coincidences are much more nu- 
merous ; Quarll finds a turtle, like Crusoe, turns it on its 
back to keep it, uses the shell for a dish and a kettle com- 
bined, preserves his fresh fish, flesh, and fowl, in the salt 
water. His building, and furnishing, are of a piece with 
Robinson Crusoe's ; so too his daily rounds, his devotional 
exercises. These last were somewhat particular ; Quarll 
was a man of a religious turn, never forgot to ask a bless- 
ing, return thanks at his meals, nor his daily devotions. 
His evening exercises are picturesquely described ; he re- 
gularly resorted to a place where echoes were wonderfully 
multiplied and prolonged, and being gifted with a noble 
voice, which had been highly cultivated, he filled the val- 
ley or cavern with a thousand melodious airs. In this 
book, as in its prototype, we find the same ceaseless requi- 
sitions and provisions for the appetite. Quarll is always 
getting in his fish and chestnuts, and pickling his mush- 
rooms, and entrapping a hare or a duck. We get a little 
tired of this, when reading on a full stomach, or in a large 
town ; but on a deserted island the three meals must be 
the chief objects of worldly thoughts. Quarll's monkeys 
play an important part in the narrative, and fill a large 
place in his benevolent affections. His long beard is as 
characteristic as Robinson's fur cap, which made us re- 
gard him as a grenadier, in our childish days: the old man, 

5 



98 LITERAKY STUDIES. 

thouo-h eighty-eight when discovered, could sneeze like a 
man of thirty : had a powerful voice, and an uncommonly 
viiTorous frame. He was almost a giant in his muscular 
power, yet mild as an humble Christian. The only defects 
about Quarll are those of clotiiing : from his waist up he 
is naked ; he has no sort of covering for his head, and his 
feet are bare of shoes and stockings. We think the author 
oucht to have furnished him, at least, with an umbrella, 
and a pair of buckskin slippers ; he might have sent them 
ashore on a wave from the wreck, or have prevailed on the 
voyagers to leave them for future use. As it is, our vene- 
rable friend looks as if a severe winter would give him a 
bad cold, from wet feet, and in summer there was imminent 
danger of a sun stroke. To leave this trifling, and add to 
tlie force of our former argument, we annex a short pas- 
san^e from an account of Mr. Dorrington's voyage home, 
which is as like Defoe's style as Moll Flanders is like the 
History of the Plague, in point of manner, or as any one 
work of the same author is like any other : 

" Having refreshed ourselves very well on this island 
(Juan Fernandez), we resolved to steer for Cape Verde in 
Chili. On the 12th we made the island of St. Jago, where 
-vve anchored, and sent our boat ashore. Here we bought 
some hogs and black cattle for our voyage round Cape 
Horn to the Brazils, as also some corn and maize. 

" We weighed anclior on the 20th, and sailed from hence 
round Cape Horn. Round the Cape the weather favored 
us extremely ; and nothing happened that was material, 
only that we were chased by a pirate ship, for about twelve 
hours on the 29th ; but the niglit coming on, it favored us, 
so that we lost her. On the 4th of September we made 
Falkland's Islands, and Cape St. Antonio, near the mouth 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 99 

of the River de la Plata, in Paraguay, on the 25th ; when 
we stood out to sea, and made the island of Grande, on the 
coast of Brazil, on the 29th. We here received a letter 
from our owners, commanding us home, and not to sail for 
New England, as designed. Here we got beef, mutton, 
hogs, fowls, sugar, rum, oranges, and lemons, so that now 
we did not want for good punch." 

Does not this read like a page out of a veritable log-book 
from the hand of Daniel Defoe ? 

The account of Quarll is written in the third person, in- 
stead of being an autobiography. For this reason we con- 
ceive that it loses a portion of its spirit. It is a work no 
less cui'ious than interesting, and contains much valuable 
matter of a miscellaneous character. It is interspersed 
with judicious reflection, and enlivened by agreeable pic- 
tures, it relates singular facts. It is withal highly cha- 
racteristic of the subject of it, and full of a personal 
interest. To confirm this criticism, we must not delay 
giving the reader specimens under each head. Previously 
to doing this we will extract a longer passage than the pre- 
ceding, to give the reader a better taste of our author's 
general manner. It is all over Defoe. It relates a passage 
in the solitary existence of Quarll : 

" About forty paces farther he found a chest in a cleft 
of the rock, which had been washed up there by the vio- 
lence of the storm. After thanking heaven for its mercy 
in sending this gift, he tried to lift it, but could not ; he 
was therefore obliged to fetch his hatchet to break it open, 
that he might take away what was in it by degrees. Hav- 
ing taken as much of the sail cloth as he could conveniently 
carry, with the few oysters he had got, he went home and 
fetched the tool, wherewith he wrenched open the chest, 

LofC. 



100 LITERARY STUDIES. 

from which he took a suit of clothes and some fine linen. 
' These,' said he, ' neither the owner nor I want ;' so laid 
them down. The next thing he took out was a roll of 
parchment, being blank indentures and leases ; * these.' 
said he, ' are instruments of law, and are often applied to 
injustice ; but I'll alter their mischievous properties, and 
make them records of Heaven's mercies, and Providence's 
wonderful liberality to me ; instead of being the ruin of 
some, they may chance to be the reclaiming of others.' 
At the bottom of the chest lay a runlet of brandy, a 
Cheshire cheese, a leather bottle full of ink, with a parcel 
of pens, and a penknife ; 'as for these,' said he, 'they are 
of use ; the pens, ink, and parclmient, have equipped me 
to keep a journal, which will divert and pass away a few 
anxious hours. By degrees he took home the chest and its 
contents ; and now having materials to begin his journal, 
he immediately fell to work ; that for want of otiier books, 
he might at his leisure peruse his past transactions, and the 
many mercies he had received from heaven ; and that after 
his decease whoever might be directed hither by Provi- 
dence, upon reading his wonderful escapes in the greatest 
of dangers, his miraculous living when remote from human 
assistance, in the like extremity he should not despair. 
Thus he began from his being eight years old, to the day 
of his being cast away, being then twenty-eight years of 
age, resolving to continue it to his death." 

It can hardly be expected that we should attempt the 
barest outline of incidents in a nvagazine article. We can 
only touch a few points in a very cursory manner. 

The hero of the adventures is a philosopher by nature 
and from circumstances : he has got a habit of reflection, 
and is perpetually moralizing on the most familiar aspects 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 101 

of nature, and the most ordinary occurrences of life. 
Thus, walking along the sea shore, he perceives at the foot 
of a rock, " an extraordinary large whale, which, cast there 
by the late high wind, had died for want of water. There 
were shoals of small fishes swimming about it in the shal- 
low water wherein it lay, as rejoicing at its death." Upon 
this he remarks, " Thus the oppressed rejoice at a tyrant's 
fall. Well, happy are they who, like me, are under hea- 
ven's government only." He then with his knife cut 
several slices of the whale and threw them to the small 
fishes, saying, " It is just ye should, at last, feed on that 
which so long fed on you;" a homily which admits of a 
political construction. Here recurs another instance of 
his philosophic turn. " One day, having walked the island 
over and over, he proceeded to view the sea, whose fluid 
element being ever in motion, affords new objects of admi- 
ration. The day being very fair, and the weather as calm, 
he sat down upon the rock, taking pleasure in seeing the 
waves roll, and, as it were, chase one another ; the second 
pursuing the first, and being itself overtaken by a succeed- 
ing, until they sunk altogether. ' This,' said he, ' is a true 
emblem of ambition ; men striving to outdo one another 
are often undone.' " 

As he was making reflections on the emptiness of vanity 
and pride, and returning thanks to heaven that he was sepa- 
rated from the world, which abounds in nothing so much, a 
ship appeared at a great distance, a sight he had not seen since 
his shipwreck. "Most unlucky invention," said he, "that 
ever came into a man's thoughts. The ark, which gave 
the first notion of a floating habitation, was ordered for the 
preservation of man ; but its fatal copies daily expose him 
to destruction." Notwithstanding liis philosophy, Quarll 



102 LITERARY STUDIES. 

is thrown into deep distress by the failure of an attempt to 
reacli the island, on the part of the sailors. This was, 
however, brief. Again, he misses an opportunity of escape. 
On a third occasion, an endeavor is made to carry him off 
by force, for exhibition. This was unsuccessful. A fourth 
chance of release is repulsed by him, having determined 
to spend the remnant of his life in his (now) beloved re- 
treat. 

Our hermit has a lively talent for coloring, an agreea- 
ble, descriptive fancy. The following present a few ex- 
amples : 

Antelopes. " Having a majestic presence, body and 
limbs representing a stag, and the noble march of a horse." 
A beautiful unknown bird. " He contemplated with de- 
light on the inexpressible beauty of the feathers, which on 
the back were after the nature of a drake's, every one dis- 
tinguished from the other by a rim round the edge, abou 
the breadth of a large thread, and being of a changeable 
color, from red to aurora and green ; the ribs were of a 
delightful blue, and the feathers pearl-color, speckled with 
a bright yellow ; the breast and belly, if they might be 
said to be of any particular color, were that of a dove's 
feathers, rimmed like the back, diversely changing ; the 
head, which was like that of a swan for make, was purple, 
changing as if moved ; the bill like burnislied gold ; the 
eyes like a ruby, with a rim of gold around them ; the feet 
the same as the bill ; the size of the bird was between that 
of a middling goose and a duck, and in shape it somewhat 
resembled a swan." 

Can this be a veritable picture or a fanciful extrava- 
gance ? A little farther on is the description of a bird 
somewhat similar, but still more gorgeous in its plumage. 



LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PHILIP QUARLL. 103 

The sea monster he paints a horrible creature, and with 
the Gorgon terrors of Behemoth himself. It is evidently 
an imaginary phantasm. " A form without likeness, and 
yet comparable to the most terrible part of every frightful 
creature ; a large head, resembling that of a lion, bearing 
three pair of horns ; one pair upright, like that of an ante- 
lope, another pair like wild goats', two more bending back- 
wards ; its foce armed all round with darts, like a porcu- 
pine ; with great eyes sparkling like a flint struck with a 
steel ; its nose like a wild horse, always snarling ; the 
mouth of a lion and teeth of a panther, the jaws of an ele- 
phant, and the tusks of a wild boar, shouldered like a 
giant, with claws like an eagle, bodied and covered with 
shells like a rhinoceros, and the color of a crocodile." In 
this fertile region, Quarll meets with numberless instances 
of the prodigality of nature ; the rarest fruits, fowls, and 
fishes ; forests of beautiful trees, sometimes of miraculous 
size, one covered with its branches a whole acre ; while ano- 
ther grew for the same extent, so closely interwoven in its 
branches, which seemed almost to spring from the roots, as 
to form an impenetrable barrier, a sort of natural picket or 
palisade. Monkeys were the hermit's pets, and he would 
sometimes excite a quarrel between two varieties, the 
green and grey species, to induce reflections on the folly 
of brawling and fighting. For invariably a third party 
came in and stole away the spoils for which they were 
contending. 

A pleasant instance of our hermit's loyalty is mentioned 
in the introduction to the adventures by the compilers of 
them, in whose hands Quarll left his MSS. ; which, at the 
same time, fixes the general date of the work. At the re- 
past given by the old man to Dorrington, the health of 



104 LITERARY STUDIES. 

George III. was drank ; and an eulogiuni passed upon his 
character, to which some dissenting criticism might be of- 
fered. 

We liave now endeavored to give the reader a general 
idea of Philip Quarll's adventures, but trust he will 
speedily consult that history itself to verify our conjectures 
in })art, but more particularly for the amusement and pro- 
fit of an entire perusal. 

Peter Wilkins we can hardly pretend to write upon af- 
ter Hunt. But we may retain a remembrance, and haz- 
ard a conjecture. It was our first play (tlie story drama- 
tized) and hence can by no possibility be forgotten, as such 
an occasion forms an epoch in the life of every individual. 
We cannot think the author of Philip Quarll and Peter 
Wilkins are one and the same person, for with a great simi- 
larity, an element entirely original is introduced into the 
latter, the author of which displays a more copious inven- 
tion and a more spiritual fancy tlian the author of the first 
work. Botli are admirable of their kind, a class now quite 
extinct, and to tlic reproduction of which, our present race 
of story-tollers appear quite inadequate from a want of 
faith, a want of invention, a want of simplicity, and a want 
of exact truth and fidelity of imagination. 



XIII . 



WALTON'S LIYES 



"There are no colors in the fairest sky 
So fair as these. 7'he feather whence the pen 
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men, 
Dropped from an Angel's wing. With moistened eye 
We read of Faiitli and purest Charity 
In Statesman, Priest, and humble citizen : 
could we copy their mild virtues, then 
What joy to live, what blessedness to die ! 
Methinks their very names shine still and bright ; 
Apart, like glow-worms on a summer night, 
Or lonely tapers when from far they fling 
A guiding ray; or seen, like stars on high. 
Satellites burning in a lucid ring 
Around meek Walton's heavenly memory." 

Wordsworth. 

In the whole circle of Englisli Literature, a volume more 
unique and attractive to the best class of readers cannot 
easily be found, than the Lives of Walton. The most en- 
thusiastic praises of the acutcst critics have conferred an 
enviable immortality on their admirable author, which, 
added to the sweet and manly character of Honest Izaak, 
have united to give his book a place on tlie shelf above 
that of many writers of greater reputation and more bril- 
liant genius. On a work of such excellence and so well 
known, we shall not now dwell with much particularity. 



106 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Our object at present will be, to consider the principal 
features common to the Lives, and the personal as well as 
literary character of Walton himself. A certain family 
likeness exists between all the different heroes of Walton, 
and a similar mode of handling the relation of their lives. 
Thus all of them — Donne, Wotton, Herbert, Hooker, San- 
derson — were remarkable for their early studies as well as 
precocity of genius : each was a liberal scholar and de- 
voted to his calling : each was a firm and zealous church- 
man : all of them but Wotton were divines, and he was a 
sort of lay preacher : they were all most fortunate in their 
deaths, regular and happy in their lives, even Hooker, not- 
withstanding his domestic trials. In their tempers and 
dispositions, they were men of great mildness and modera- 
tion : of a charitable turn, given to hospitality and the 
company of their friends, liberal thinkers, inclined to inno- 
cent pleasantry, utterly devoid of cunning or deceit, sin- 
cere Christians and unpretending philanthropists. Yet 
with all these points in common, each was possessed of a 
marked individuality of character and genius. Though 
both of them poets and fine poets, the sentiment of Herbert 
is quite different from the fancy of Donne, and that again 
from the reflection of Wotton. Hooker and Sanderson, 
able on the same topics, displayed talents quite diverse ; 
the one being more of a general philosophical inquirer, 
the other more of a theoretical casuist. — There can be no 
stronger argument for the purity and innocence of Walton's 
life, than the fact that these were his personal friends — com- 
panions of his choice, who thought it no want of dignity in 
them to associate with the simple-hearted author of the 
Complete Angler. The Lives are written with considera- 
ble minuteness, and are yet very general, minute in par- 



Walton's lives. 107 

ticular instances, but general in the main outlines. They 
uniformly commence with an apology for his unfitness for 
the task of historical narrative, and excuses for the defects 
of style and manner. This was not, in all probability, an 
affectation, but real diffidence. 

The youth and prime of Walton having been passed in 
the pursuit of trade and commerce, his education had been 
of a very miscellaneous character, picked up from desul- 
tory reading and the conversation of the divines with whom 
he was a great favorite, and of whom he was a decided ad- 
mirer. Commencing authorship, too, late in life, he felt 
the clogs of business and the want of freedom in his ideas 
and composition. This he soon attained, and if his style 
never became perfect, yet it was original of its kind, and 
such as no art of rhetoric could teach. 

Prefixed to the Lives is a biography of Walton, by Dr. 
Zouch, the same who wrote the life of Sir Philip Sidney. 
He has made a better preface of the first, than his stupid 
volume on the latter personage, though his passing criti- 
cisms on Donne and Fuller smack of the trained critic of 
the formal French school of criticism of the eighteenth 
century. 

The profession of Walton is known to have been that of 
a wholesale linen-draper or Hamburgh merchant. His 
first initiation into trade is thought to have been in one of 
the shops where, in company with other industrious young 
men, he was placed by the munificence of Sir Thomas 
Gresham (the English Medici, and founder of the Royal 
Exchange), who had erected several in the upper part of 
his celebrated building. After a course of prudent manage- 
ment, of frugality and assiduous labor, Walton, at the age 
of fifty years, retired from business, resolving to spend the 



108 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



rest of his years in the practice of his social and religious 
duties, and to cultivate his powers by reading, conversation 
and reflection. A moderate independency satisfied the 
simple desires of this contented Christian philosopher, and 
he W3ls too wise a man not to leave the turmoil of business 
as soon as his circumstances warranted the removal. Un- 
like our modern money-seekers, he preferred ease and 
a quiet conscience to extravagance and display, and the 
laborious tasks requisite to meet large demands. Immedi- 
ately on leaving trade, he turned author, and he affords 
one example more of the good writers who have arisen, not 
from the peasantry alone (which class boasts a Burns, an 
Elliott, a Hogg, and a Bloomfield), but from the middling 
classes of society, as Richardson the novelist, who was a 
printer ; Defoe, a hosier ; and even lower, Ben Jonson, a 
bricklayer, and Doddsley, a footman, who became a writer 
and publisher. We think we can perceive the effects of 
his business habits in the writings of Walton, in his method 
and accuracy, which it is becoming the fashion to impeach, 
his speciality, and honest dealing. 

The literary character of Walton is distinguished by the 
same sincerity and pure feeling, that mark his personal 
disposition. Good sense, a reverence for the wise and 
good, a natural piety, and unfeigned simplicity, are the 
principal characteristics of the author as well as of the 
man. His garrulity (in some cases the effect of age, he 
wrote the life of Sanderson in his eighty-fifth year) is the 
innocent, free talk of a familiar friend ; yet it must be 
confessed this inclination to gossip and to accept reports 
and traditions as true history, has led him, in some cases, 
to statements that have been charged with being one-sided 
and partial. 



WALTON S LIVES. 



109 



Beside those features of his personal character already 
mentioned, one occurs, and exceedingly prominent, his 
loyalty. This feeling grew out of his natural reverence 
for authority and superiors. He was also a zealous 
churchman for the same reason, and warmly opposed the 
covenant — and for this he suffered considerably in his tem- 
poral affairs, as well as in the trials to which his mild tem- 
per was subjected. A fast friend to royalty and the church, 
circumstances, as well as his natural bent, led him to em- 
brace that particular side. His mother was the niece of 
Archbishop Cranmer, and his wife the sister of Bishop 
Ken, who has wi'itten some fine hymns, and whom James 
II. reckoned the first among the Protestant preachers of 
his time. 

The divines of that day, with whom Walton was inti- 
mately associated, greatly influenced his mind and charac- 
ter, and may be said, by their works and conversation, to 
have formed his mind and leading opinions — Donne, Her- 
bert, Sanderson, Fuller, Ken, King, Usher, Chillingworth, 
and three poets, at that period the natural defenders of 
monarchy and nobility, Drayton, Shirley, the dramatist, 
and ChalkhiU. 

From the multitude of eulogiums and affectionate allu- 
sions to Walton, living, and his memory after death, we 
have selected the following nervous lines of Flatman, a 
forgotten poet, who has shown genius in two or three short 
pieces. 

Happy old man ! whose worth all mankind knows. 
Except himself; who charitably shows. 
The ready road to virtue and to praise. 
The road to many long and happy days, 
The noble acts of generous piety. 



110 LITERARY STUDIES. 

And how to compass true felicity. 
Hence did he learn the art of living well ; 
The bright Thealma was his oracle : 
Inspired by her he knows no anxious cares. 
Through near a century of pleasant years ; 
Easy he lives, and cheerful shall he die, 
Well spoken of by late posterity. 

How correctly the poet has prophesied, the readers and 
admirers of Walton at the present day may answer. The 
name occurs but once beside in our literature, and then in 
a work of fiction, the enchanting volume of Mackenzie ; 
and apart from the melancholy sentiment and pathetic 
sweetness of that character, it is a magic name, conse- 
crated to the respect of all scholars, and the love of all 
good men throughout the world. 



XIV. 



ELIJAH FENTON 



In a former article, on Religious Biography, the very im- 
perfect list of English biographies that rank as classic pro- 
ductions in that department of writing there inserted, in- 
cludes the lives of Milton and Waller, by Fenton, an 
author so estimable as a man, and affording so agreeable 
an instance of one class of writers, that, although little 
known himself, and author of no very important efforts, we 
are inclined to pause at his name, and sketch his personal 
and literary character. Fenton was emphatically a man 
of letters, a title of dubious meaning, and that ought to 
have a settled character. In its most enlarged sense, it 
may convey the idea of a general scholar and miscellane- 
ous author, as the term lawyer, in this country, includes 
every department in the profession, uniting the contrary 
pursuits of barrister, special pleader, conveyancer, and 
equity draughtsman, which in England are separately fol- 
lowed as distinct professions. Or it may be taken in the 
sense of D'Israeli, as that body of readers and students 
standing between the great body of authors and the larger 
body of mere readers ; aiding the first as critics, or by 
counsel and research, or else acting the part of interpreters 
or commentators for the last. The very highest order of 



112 LITERARY STUDIES. 

genius are above this class, and also the first class, of men 
of talent. A poet almost inspired, yet comparatively un- 
lettered, as Burns or Elliott, is not called a man of letters, 
since not a book-man or scholar. Yet he may be much 
superior to the mere scholar. Neither is the true man of 
letters purely a student, but also an author. He is not 
often a voluminous author, unless he is poor, for the deli- 
cacy of his taste will curb the facility of production, and 
give the last finish to his style. If obliged to live by his 
pen, he will write much, but miscellaneously, as Hazlitt 
and Hunt. It is not likely he will ever attempt a long 
work, for, if blessed with a competence, he will be too in- 
dolent, and, if pressed to write often, he cannot write at 
length. There are, then, two distinct divisions of the 
class. Gray and Warton, and, we may add, Fenton, were 
representatives of the first, and the miscellaneous authors, 
by profession, of the present and past age, of the last, as 
Goldsmith, Johnson, Cumberland, Southey, the regular 
reviewers and critics, and the ablest modern lecturers, 
Guizot, Cousin, Carlyle, etc. Fenton, though poor, was 
almost always attached to some great man or wealthy 
patron, who was glad to exchange a moderate pension for 
the pleasure of his society and conversation, and, at least 
for the latter part of his life, though his circumstances 
were narrow, yet he was placed above want and the im- 
portunate calls of necessity. He could write or read, as 
he pleased, and he cared to do little else. '- He is," says 
Pope,* " a right honest man and a good scholar : he sits 
within and does nothing but read and compose." This is 
the true picture. Mere amateurs of authorship, petty 



* Spence. 



ELIJAH FENTON. 113 

(occasional) scribblers, or deliverers of an annual address 
or a quarterly lecture; collectors of rare rhymes, they 
have not the taste to read or capacity to comprehend ; 
gentlemanly, fashionable smatterers of learning ; rich pa- 
trons, may call themselves " literary characters," or " men 
of letters," but it is not their proper designation ; they are 
more worthily styled pretenders, shallow coxcombs, arro- 
gant fools. We have met with more than one character 
of this sort. They are generally on lecture committees, 
or appointed as corresponding secretaries to literary socie- 
ties. They haunt public libraries and reading-rooms. 
Their names are in all the newspapers. These are pre- 
tenders, with full pockets. A more unfortunate pretender, 
is a poor author — one destitute in a pecuniary view, who 
takes up the trade of authorship without the means or abili- 
ties to carry it on. Such a person might as well profess 
alchemy as literature. We are willing to take the experi- 
ence of the best judges, when we conclude that a good scholar 
and able writer, if not unfortunate in other respects, must 
eventually succeed in obtaining a respectable livelihood, 
as well as the lawyer or physician, above whom he un- 
questionably ranks. For he works with the finest tools, 
on the most exalted and purifying materials. Never let 
him foro-et the sentence of a master of authorship.* 
" Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess 
above every other occupation, that even he who attains hit a 
mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that 
excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.^^ Of 
the gentility of literature, as a pursuit (not to say of its 
noble aristocracy), a paper might be written, demonstrat- 

* Hume. 



114 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



ing conclusively its generous scope and noble elevation ; 
but we believe we have pursued the subject sufficiently 
for the present. 

Of the works of Fenton, a brief criticism may serve. 
His prose is sweet and elegant : his poetry pleasing, but 
verging towards feebleness. In the high sense he was no 
poet, but only an agreeable versifier. His lives are agree- 
able abridgments of what a common writer would have 
swelled into books of twelve times the size ; but, as a mis- 
cellaneous scholar, and chiefly a classical scholar, was he 
reputed to rank high. He translated for Pope, the first, 
fourth, nineteenth, and twentieth books of the Odyssey ; 
and so smoothly, that they are not generally distinguished 
from those of Pope's translation. He was often engaged as 
private tutor — for a time he was secretary to the Earl of 
Orrery, in Flanders, and tutor to his son, who ever after- 
wards mentioned him with esteem and tenderness. He 
was at one time assistant in a school, and afterwards kept 
a school for himself. Bolingbroke persuaded him to give 
this up, for more honorable employment (as it was thought), 
and court favor. Pope stood by him under all circum- 
stances, and procured him an enviable situation as instruc- 
tor and companion to Secretary Craggs, who died too soon 
for the successful prosecution of the scheme. With South- 
erne, the dramatic poet, Fenton preserved a close inti- 
macy. At his house he wrote his tragedy of Mariamne, 
which brought its author one thousand pounds. The 
widow of Sir William Trumbull, at Pope's recommenda- 
tion (who loved to make his friends happy), invited Fenton 
to educate her son, whom he accompanied to Cambridge. 
Fenton died at the seat of this excellent woman, in the 
capacity of auditor of her accounts a species of gentleman- 



ELIJAH FENTON. 



115 



steward and agent. Pope wrote his epitaph, a monument 
of his taste and affection. 

The personal character of Fenton was delightful — a 
temper sweet, yet not insipid ; a judgment manly and 
liberal ; a taste refined, but not fastidious ; a talent for 
conversation, lively, entertaining and instructive ; integrity 
of the purest dye ; the gentlest consideration ; — these were 
the peculiar characteristics of one of the noblest of human 
creatures. " None knew him but to praise." His merits 
have softened the severity of Johnson, and disarmed the 
satire of Pope. For the brevity of his life, Johnson apolo- 
gizes ; he says, " it is not the effect of indifference or 
negligence." Fenton was a non-juror, and hence "a 
commoner of Nature ;"* but, though friendless and poor 
(in his early career), his biographer adds, " he kept his 
name unsullied, and never suffered himself to be reduced, 
like too many of the same sect, to mean arts and dishonor- 
able shifts. Whoever mentioned Fenton, mentioned him 
with honor." In the lives of Milton and Waller, Johnson 
refers with respect and eulogy to our author ; and in the 
life of Pope he repeats his former praises — •' The character 
of Fenton was so amiable, that I cannot forbear to wish 
for some poet or biographer to display it more fully for the 
advantage of posterity. If he did not stand in the first 
rank of genius, he may claim a place in the second ; and, 
whatever criticism may object to his writings, censure 
could find very little to blame in his life." No man may, 
with truth, assail Johnson for want of heart ; he had, in 
fact, a truly humane disposition. Eulogy of a man from 
whom he could expect nothing if living, and to whom, 
dead, he owed no debt of gratitude, bespeaks a generous 
nature. The only defect in Fenton (a most venial fault in 

* Johnson. 



116 LITERARY STUDIES. 

him, though not in others) was a physical indolence, the 
effect of constitutional debility. He was tall and corpu- 
lent, sluggish, a late riser, and took little exercise. An 
attendant, where he once lodged, used to say he would 
" lie a-bed and be fed with a spoon." Pope said he died 
of indolence ; but his distemper was the fruit of physical 
indolence — the gout. A story is told much to his credit, 
that we ought not to omit repeating : — " At an entertain- 
ment, made for the family by his elder brother, he observed 
that one of his sisters, who had married unfortunately, was 
absent ; and found, upon inquiry, that distress had made 
her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no 
great distance, he refused to sit at table till she was called, 
and when she had taken her place was careful to show her 
particular attention." 

Such was Elijah Fenton, a man who exhibited, in a pri- 
vate scene, and on a limited stage, the virtues of the philo- 
sopher and of the Christian hero ; evincing, in his patient 
forbearance, his firm integrity and honorable poverty, a 
resolution and high tone of principle, that more ennobles 
human nature than the dazzling victories and gaudy tri- 
umphs of the conqueror. This excellent man had the 
tastes, the habits, the acquisitions, the pure aspirations of 
the genuine scholar, united to the calmness, the sagacity 
and moderation of the philosopher. A better tribute to his 
memory than a polished and epigrammatic epitaph, may 
be read in the following letter of Pope to the Rev. Mr. 
Broome, the mutual friend of Pope and Fenton, and their 
associate in the translation of the Odyssey. We annex it 
entire, with the complete details : — 



ELIJAH FENTON. 117 

" To the Rev. Mr. Broome, 

" At Pulham, near Harlestone, Nor., 
" [By Beccles, Bag.] SufFolke. 

" Dear Sir, — I intended to write to you on this melan- 
choly subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before yrs came ; 
but stay'd to have informed myself and you of ye circum- 
stances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, 
tho' so early in life, & was declining for 5 or 6 months. 
It was not as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but I 
believe rather a complication first of gross humors, as he 
was naturally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he 
used no sort of exercise. No man better bore ye ap- 
proaches of his dissolution (as I am told) or with less 
ostentation yielded up his Being. The great modesty 
which you know was natural to him, and ye great con- 
tempt he had for all sorts of vanity and Parade, never ap- 
peared more than in his last moments ; he had a conscious 
satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, and feeling himself 
honest, true, and unpretending to more than was his own. 
So he dyed, as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient, 
contentment. 

" As to any papers left behind him, I dare say they can 
be but few ; for this reason, he never wrote out of vanity, 
or thought much of the applause of men. I know one 
instance where he did his utmost to conceal his own merit 
that way ; and if we join to this his natural love of ease, 
I fancy we must expect little of this sort ; at least I hear 
of none except some few further remarks on Waller 
(which his cautious integrity made him leave an order to 
be given to Mr. Tonson), and perhaps, though 'tis many 
years since I saw it, a Translation of ye first Book of 



118 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Oppian. He had begun a tragedy of Dion, but made 
small progress in it. 

"As to his other affairs he dyed poor, but honest, leaving 
no debts or legacies ; except of a few pounds to Mr. 
Trumbull and my Lady, in token of respect, gratefulness, 
and mutual esteem. 

" I shall, with pleasure, take upon me to draw this amia- 
ble, quiet, deserving, unpretending Christian and philoso- 
phical character, in his epitaph. There truth may be 
spoken in a few words : as for Flourish, and Oratory, and 
Poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively writers, 
such as love writing for writing sake, and wd rather shew 
their own Fine Parts, yn report the valuable ones of any 
other man. So the Elegy I renounce. 

" I condole with you from my heart on the loss of so 
, worthy a man, and a Friend to us both. Now he is gone, 
I must tell you he has done you many a good office, and 
set your character in ye fairest light to some who either 
mistook you, or knew you not. I doubt not he has done 
the same for me. 

" Adieu : Let us love his memory, and profit by his 
example — I am, very sincerely, 

"DrSir, 
" Your affectionate & real servant, 

" A. Pope. 

"Aug. 29, 1730." 

Thus wrote, not the just censor, the keen satirist, the 
brilliant moral painter, the gay, elegant, courtly letter- 
writer, the arch critic of the artificial school of poetry and 
of criticism ; but the humane, the affectionate, the friend- 
ly Pope, out of his very heart of hearts, with earnestness 
and undoubted zeal. To question the truth of this were 
to insult humanity. 



XV . 



SWEDENBORGIANISM 



We have here two accredited expositions of the character 
and tenets of the Swedenborgian sect, by respectable cler- 
gymen of that denomination ; and, in order to satisfy the 
minds of those inquiring into the truth and genuineness of 
these doctrines, in ever so slight a degree, we shall present 
a brief abstract of them ; but first, it may be necessary to 
lay before the reader some account of that extraordinary 
man, Emmanuel Swedenborg ; for such, all who study his 
life and system must allow him to have been, however 
they may refuse to admit his apostolical or prophetic cha- 
racter. 

Swedenborg was the son of a Lutheran bishop, and edu- 
cated with, perhaps, something of sectarian rigor. We 
conceive we see, in this fact, an explanation of those vision- 
ary theories, and that " largest liberty," which occupied 
the thoughts of his later years. From a restricted bigotry 
to unbounded freedom of belief, the transition is neither 
uncommon nor unnatural. Yet, true to his early education, 

* "A Course of five Lectures on the fundamental Doctrines of the 
New Jerusalem Church," by Richard De Charms, 92 pp., 12mo., 
Philadelphia. " Barrett's Lectures," 12mo. John Allen. 



120 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Swedenborg never left the communion of the Lutheran 
Church, but remained a member to the day of his death. 
Many of his sentiments, of a nobler morality, and much of 
the spiritual interpretation, which he vulgarized by its too 
frequent use, might safely be introduced into every sect, 
and into the bosom even of the true Church ; but then, 
purely in an episodical manner, and not as the only saving 
truth. Though writing and teaching as " a man sent from 
the Lord," yet it was not until after his death that his fol- 
lowers united together to form, what they assumed to style 
(with sufficient humility to be sure) The New Church. 
Sectarian arrogance and spiritual conceit have rarely 
transcended this. 

Swedenborg was early distinguished for quickness, in- 
dustry, memory and enthusiasm. He had a rich, luxuriant 
fancy, and some poetical talent. He was a chemist, lin- 
guist, and mathematician : understood metallurgy and 
anatomy, and possessed an inventive spirit, and an original 
vein, in all of these. He was more than this, a clear, exact, 
methodical man of business ; drew up the best financial 
reports, succeeded in embassies, and made himself a useful 
statesman. Altogether, he was a man of rare natural 
abilities, with much and various culture. He filled nume- 
rous offices of high trust, was ennobled and honored with 
distinguished attentions ; at one time the favorite of Charles 
Xn. ; and, if we are not in error, he converted a later 
sovereign to his peculiar views. Swedenborg, from all 
accounts, must have been an honest man, a pure man, a 
sincere Christian, but essentially a religious enthusiast ; 
and, as we cannot help thinking, possessed with a mono- 
mania, not fierce and turbulent, but gentle and spiritual. 
It has been said, that the study of the Book of Revelations 



SWEDENBORGIANISM. 121 

would turn any man's head who attempts to translate that 
mystical allegory into plain prose. Newton (says a great 
authority) wrote nonsense on the Revelations. Wise Dan 
Chaucer, long since, told his readers that 

The greatest clerks are not the wisest men. 

And Swedenborg adds another illustrious name to the list 
of those who attempt impossible things ; ranking, with the 
inquirers after the longitude, those who seek to square the 
circle, or discover perpetual motion. It were as wise to 
hunt after the art of transmuting the baser metals into 
gold, as to aim at a new (and true, at the same time) com- 
mentary on the Christian scheme and the Holy Scriptures. 
From one of the best accounts of the life of Swedenborg, 
in the Encyclopasdia Americana, to which our attention has 
been directed by a Svvedenborgian, we adopt a conclusion 
of the critic, that Swedenborg was rather a religious poet 
than a scientific theologian : that, though a man of a truly 
devotional spirit, he had more of fancy in his piety and his 
so-called visions, than he himself imagined. His country, 
his temperament, his very name, smacks of mysticism. 
His followers deny this : but we want no other proof of it, 
than some of his own pretensions, and the titles of some of 
his works.* What man but he, save Quevedo in satire, 
and Virgil, with Dante and Milton, in epic poesy, ever pre- 
tended a picture of Hell ? Swedenborg gives, also, a mi- 
nute description of Heaven and the Angelic Spirits. We 
have heard the Swedish Apostle compared to Jacob Boeh- 
men, and we suspect a close parallel : it is said that the 
former was obliged to the earlier mystic, for many ideas 

* Arcana Celestia, the Apocalypse, and Angelic Wisdom. 
6 



122 LITERARY STUDIES. 

and images. Even Emerson, very lately, spoke of Swe- 
denborg as the greatest poet since Dante, thereby greatly 
alloying liis prophetic character. For, the introduction of 
fancy into religion leaves too much room for the exercise 
of human invention. A poetical religionist is likely to be 
an unsafe biblical critic. We see this exemplified in the 
strange mixture of ancient Christianity and Neo-Platon- 
ism, where the distinctive doctrines of each were so con- 
fused as to impair the verisimilitude of the former, and give 
too high authority to the visions of tlie latter. This grew 
to so great an evil, that after the separation of the two di- 
verse elements, the doctrine of the Trinity itself, the very 
corner-stone of Christianity, came to be considered, by some, 
a relic of Platonism. The prophets of old spake from a 
celestial inspiration ; the impostors of modern days (we do 
not rank Swedenborg among conscious impostors), the 
Mother Ann Lees, of the Shakers ; the Joe Smiths, of the 
Mormons, etc., seek the light of their own unenlightened 
reason, and the vain boastings of a copious, but ill-regulated 
fancy. The Apostles of old were, most of them, plain, 
unlettered men. Modern pscudo-apostlcs are men of some 
acquirements, and a ready invention. To make a genuine 
Christian disciple, Faith and Love only are wanting (both, 
how rare !) ; but, to make a fashionable and popular, vulgar 
saint, some vigor of cliaracter and physical constitution is 
necessary ; but more of a dazzling showy species of talent, 
with a vast fund of impudence and imperturbable self- 
reliance. We believe Swedenborg to have been a good 
man, in most respects ; and in some particulars, a great 
man ; but like many men, both great and good, he was 
vain, or worse ; and enthusiastic (in the sense of weak- 
ness, not a manly, vigorous enthusiasm) to an extraordina- 



SWEDENBORGIANISM. 123 

ry degree. Neither of these qualities is incompatible 
with great sincerity, and even elevation of mind ; and for 
these traits we reverence his character. Swedenborg is 
represented as a man of uncommonly clear judgment, 
which we must either wholly deny, or else impugn his 
cliaracter for veracity, for humility, and for philosophical 
consistency. Regarding him in the light of a herald of a 
new day, the forerunner of a purer age, we can only 
speak of Swedenborg as the dupe of his own fancies, and 
without a particle of respect for his spiritual and charac- 
teristic pretensions. In those passages where he exhorts to 
spiritual love, and purity of life and thought, he displays a 
noble spirit. Mr. De Charms has a section (pp. 47, 8), that 
unfolds this divine principle. But, in doctrinal points, he 
is sometimes far wrong ; often perfectly at variance with 
well ascertained Christian Doctrine ; sometimes crude, 
sometimes almost blasphemous. 

Of this doctrine we shall attempt a faint sketch. The 
Swedenborgian believes his to be the (New Jerusalem) 
Church ; that the final judgment took place somewhere in 
the middle of the last century ; that a new, and truer, and 
purer dispensation, commenced with Swedenborg ; and al- 
though they speak of him as merely a herald of a new 
era, and interpreter of the Scriptures, as a servant of the 
Lord ; still they assume for his interpretation and teaching 
(as it seems to us) equal weight and value with that at- 
tached to the precepts and parables of our Saviour, or (at 
the least) to that commonly conceded to his disciples and 
immediate followers. We add some of their peculiar 
views. Their notion of the Trinity differs from that of the 
only true Church. They imagine it to include a trinity of 
principles, and not of persons ; the principles of Love and 



124 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Wisdom, with the operation of both ; or, as they define it, 
an intimate, or middle, and an ultimate principle. They 
assert the non-existence of a Trinity before the Incarnation 
of the Word ; that then it arose out of the union of the 
Divine and Human Natures, with the operation of both ; 
just as in Man, there is the Soul, and Body, and Life. 

Carrying out a spirit of independent inquiry, they also 
choose to differ from the received acceptation of the Atone- 
ment, or, as they quaintly term it, at-one-ment. They 
deny that God the Father was propitiated by the vicarious 
suffering of God the Son ; since, on the ground of their 
different notion of the Divine Trinity, they cannot reconcile 
the idea to their minds. (Vide Barrett's IX. Lecture.) 
Both of these most important heads require a fuller discus- 
sion than we are theologians enough to give, or than, if we 
were, we have space, in this rapid outline, to include. 

In this desultory notice, we do not pretend to preserve 
any formality of method, much less thoroughness of analy- 
sis, but only to touch on the most striking points. One of 
these is, the presumption of speaking of a peculiar sect 
(much as they avoid the name, they yet form a sect), as 
the New Church, or the New Jerusalem ; applying the 
phraseology of the Revelations, and implying a degree of 
holiness and immaculate purity in its members. What- 
ever is neiv, we might remind these sectaries, is not, there- 
fore, true ; and we may quote the remark of Sheridan, of 
a popular speaker, that of what he said, " the new was 
not true, and the true not new." There is much elevated 
sentiment and acute metaphysical reasoning in the Sweden- 
borgian writers ; but the morality is the best morality of 
the New Testament. Better there is none. Human 
genius cannot improve tlie precepts or spiritual teaching 



SWEDENBORGIANISM. 125 

of pure Christianity ; and human invention alters only for 
the worse. The new interpretation, the new vouchers, 
we hesitate to accept ; nay, more, we reject them altoge- 
ther, whenever they contradict the old. Mr. Barrett sup- 
poses, like many others, most unphilosophically (as it ap- 
pears to us), and most illogically, by an entirely false 
analogy, that theology must advance with the physical 
sciences. We find the earliest commentators most re- 
garded, and for many dark sayings we may find no ade- 
quate version. Mystery must ever hang over portions of 
the Holy page. What is essential to be known, is plain. 
But there are many things we see " through a glass 
darkly," and which, we are reminded, are to be seen in no 
clearer light, while an earthly film overspreads the vision. 
No improved theological optics can make us see all things 
clearly, until our eyes (the eyes of the mind) are touched 
by that Divine Hand that opened the eyes of the blind 
Bartimeus. Spiritual truths can be discerned only in a 
spiritual manner ; and we cannot now, save where a 
miracle is granted, see with a pure spiritual vision. All 
the aids of critical opticians, when conducted in a wrong 
spirit, afford rather optical delusions than any real benefit. 
We are truly told, that sensuality, self-love, worldliness, 
and pride, so becloud our spiritual perceptions, as to pre- 
vent our recognizing the truth as it is, or loving it as we 
should ; and, undoubtedly, the spirits of most men are too 
much immersed in sense ', but, then, no refinement of 
spirituality will make a prophet out of every ordinary 
individual. This is as absurd as the notion of another 
sect, with regard to speaking the Unknown Tongue, which 
is equally ridiculoys and blasphemous ; and means a dia- 
lect that none can controvert to be what it professes, since 



126 LITERARY STUDIES. 

no one can recognize it. The followers of Swedenborg 
deny this mysticism ; but it is palpably evident in his life 
and habits of mind, as well as in his version of Scripture. 
He taught a science of correspondencies (we see no good 
reason for prefixing the definite article, since we are not 
prepared to receive it) ; he has published visions of the 
world of spirits. He attempts to expound the mysteries 
of the Book of Revelations. He expressed himself by 
symbol and allegory. His style is an imitation of the 
Scriptures, and, like the Book of Jasher, reads like a close 
imitation. This style of composition, we conceive, by an 
uninspired writer (whose credentials were not most clear), 
to be taking a most reprehensible and audacious liberty 
with the Word of God. 

His science of correspondencies, which it is pretended 
was lost by Job, and only revived by Swedenborg himself, 
is a species of figurative -allegory. It shows acuteness and 
fancy ; but we can find in it, no innate force compelling 
the conviction of the understandinij. It is also singular in 
this respect, that it translates figurative allegories into the 
most literal phraseology, whilst it gives a symbolic trans- 
lation to the simple records of history. Mr. Barrett speaks 
thus of it : " The Science of Correspondencies, as revealed 
in the writings of Swedenborg, furnishes us with a rule, 
and the only rule, as we have before said,ybr interpreting 
aright the word of GodJ' Yet this species of comment 
and translation is full of the most startling assumptions. 
It denies the historical accuracy of Genesis, defining the 
limits of true history, which is declared to have commenced 
at the calling of Abraham. The first eleven chapters are 
taken as one continued allegory. Adam is tliought to 
typify the first Church : the Flood, to mean a flood of 



SWEDENBORGIANISM. 127 

ignorance and sin over the moral world. The Waters 

o 

are understood as truths or fables, as they relate to good 
or evil. By Noali, and the creatures preserved in the 
Ark, are rendered the preservation of good principles and 
sound doctrine, by the Divine Providence. All this is 
very ingenious and plausible ; we can hardly assign it a 
worthier title. Speculation and fancy may run on, in this 
manner, ad libitum. Pure allegory, on the other hand, is 
construed into an exact and liberal narrative of futurity — 
a prophetic relation, in part accomplished. The New Je- 
rusalem is localized ; the Judgment Day is identified with 
a past epoch. Parable is considered synonymous with 
matter of fact history. A wise man often discovers the 
most wisdom in letting some things alone ; in leaving moot 
points at rest. Swedenborg could not abstain from a rash 
curiosity of gazing upon the Holy of Holies ; he must 
needs intrude into the awful precincts of the Apocalypse. 
And here in his daring rashness, he evinced equal folly. 

His visions, and publications of an intercourse with the 
spiritual world, are of a piece with the rest. It is painful 
to see the state into which that man's mind must have 
fallen, who could write out such accounts as we find in 
Lecture xii. (pages 415, 416-418, in particular.) We 
arc almost tempted to exclaim, 

Lo ! what a noble mind was here o'erthrown. 

Had Swedenborg lived a century earlier, he would have 
been cited as a memorable instance in old Burton's chapter 
on Religious melancholy. A few sentences will comprise 
all the criticism on the Lectures we have to offer. Mr. 
De Charms is the clearest writer : Mr. Barrett is more 
ambitious and flowery. Both are sensible thinkers, yet 



128 LITERARY STUDIES. 

fall iuto gross blunders whenever they attempt to exalt 
their Hero and Master. A rather presumptuous parallel 
is here drawn. " We would therefore beg all who are dis- 
posed to ridicule and reject the writings of Swedenborg, on 
account of the alleged visions which they contain, to pause 
and consider, whether they do not, in their hearts, if not 
with their lips, mock at the views of ike Apostles and Prophets^ 
and reject the Scriptures as a revelation from GodJ' We can, 
by no supposition, conceive how a rejection of Sweden- 
borg's mission invalidates the genuineness of the Scrip- 
tures, or can pre-suppose such invalidation. 

The followers of this fanciful theorist (for as such, in the 
History of Religion, the character of Swedenborg, we sus- 
pect, will finally rest) are, in the majority of cases, pure- 
minded and honest men ; in some cases guided by a poeti- 
cal temperament in the choice of a religion ; in others, 
governed by the specious " rationality " of the Sweden- 
borgian scheme. Very few eminent men are numbered in 
its ranks. Dr. Hartley, the metaphysician, we believe, 
was one ; Kant appears to have been, and Coleridge was 
for a while, attracted by Swedenborgianism, as indeed he 
was by every current fashionable novelty, and curious an- 
cient heresy. American would-be Coleridges assume the 
doctrines, as a fair text for imposing rhetoric. It must be 
allowed, as we have admitted more than once, that parts of 
the teachings of the Swedish Apostle are imbued with tlie 
loftiest Christian morality ; that his spirit bathed in an at- 
mosphere of the purest refinement ; that he saw keenly 
into much of the spiritual part of our nature. Here we 
stop in our eulogium. As a moralist, Swedenborg is above 
our praise ; as a religious teacher, a biblical critic, an ex- 
pounder of mysteries, we regard him as unsafe, dangerous, 



SWEDENBORGIANISM. 129 

and rash. His sect is still very small, and its polity being 
nearer to the Congregational form of Church government 
than to any other, tends continually to independency, and 
disunion among its members. It is without an abiding 
principle of unity ; and its excessive spirit of liberty is 
liable to run into licentiousness of doctrine. In Sweden 
there are very few of this belief; more in England, and 
on the continent. In this country they have .several con- 
gregations : but we apprehend no stability in Swedenbor- 
gianism as a Church ; but that it will gradually die out 
like the Quakers and the Unitarians. Still the Church 
may derive excellent hints from some of the strictures of 
Swedenborg ; and, indeed, from more than one of the spi- 
ritual Christian philosophers of modern Europe. 



XVI 



llELIGIOUS SATIRE 



Many well-intentioned, but not very deep-thinking people, 
are mightily frightened by anything approaching to the ar- 
gunientmn ad absurdum, in matters of religion or morality. 
They fancy a disrespect, at least, if not a secret contempt 
of Christianity from satirical assaults on those who profess, 
only to disgrace it. Tiiey apprehend evil from the air of 
levity with which such subjects are treated ; an apprehen- 
sion rarely verified, except in the case of tlie very weak, 
who arc sure to go wrong in almost every possible event. 
No man but a fool or a radically bad character, ever could 
conceive of universal hollowness, because there were many 
demure and sly hypocrites in the world. A total want 
of faith is the unerring sign of a temper not to be trusted ; 
of a fickle heart and a false tongue. But satire of the pre- 
tenders to true religion is, in etfect, an eulogy of the sin- 
cerely good ; indiscriminate praise and universal censure 
being alike in this respect, that finally they tend to nothing, 
as they nullify each other by opposite extravagances. It 
is true, that satirists have sometimes transcended the pro- 
per limits of truth and discretion ; have calumniated where 
they should have calmly censured ; and have written a 
libel instead of a criticism. The most piquant satire is, 



RELIGIOUS SATIRE. 131 

necessarily, one sided, and carried to the extreme verge of 
truth ; at times overpassing it. Epigrams lose in point 
where they approach the truth. A moderate thinker is 
rarely to be found among professed wits. For, when a 
man comes to ponder and weigh opposite qualities and con- 
flicting statements, to admit this excuse and allow that 
apology, when circumstance and occasion are considered ; 
and, in a word, when he endeavors to strike a just balance 
of the actions and characters of men, he rarely can escape 
a trite conclusion or a mediocrity of argument. In a know- 
ledge of most elementary truths and general propositions, 
the philosopher and the peasant are on a par ; the differ- 
ence between them consists in a knowledge of the interme- 
diate chain of thought and reasoning on the part of the 
first, and ignorance in the case of the last. It is only 
when a point is driven home, when to paint one trait 
vividly, the rest of the features are thrown in the shade, 
that brilliancy is attained at the expense of fidelity and a 
liberal construction. To a reader of sense, however, a 
defect of this nature makes itself apparent at once, and 
he sifts out the false from the fair: to all other readers 
it matters little, for they might misconstrue the most 
irreproachable writer. We have frequent proof that the 
best book in the world has fared the worst in this respect. 

Religious satire has generally been directed either 
against the extravagances or the hypocrisy of reformers ; 
and when just and intelligent, it has certainly been of es- 
sential service. It may not benefit the immediate objects 
of it. It may harden or dishearten proselytes and late- 
converts, re-changing the self-styled elect into viler sin- 
ners than they were before ; but it is productive of benefit 



132 LITERARY STUDIES. 

to those who are not intimately connected with either any- 
specific reformation itself or those conducting it. 

The very idea of undertaking to convert the world, at 
the present time of day, discovers, in him who cherishes it, 
a palpable defect of judgment and common precaution, and 
will induce compassion where it does not provoke ridicule. 
Such innovators appear to forget how much benefit may be 
accomplished by the thorough performance of individual 
duties, to say nothing of every man's natural and (as it 
were) hereditary influence in his own walk and circle of 
society, which may be turned to the best account possible. 
They leave the obvious and natural claims of their Maker, 
their own souls, and their fellow-creatures, for the vain 
prosecution of fantastic projects. Like the alchemist, they 
think they possess a talisman, unknown to all others, for 
converting sinners ; a talisman, that too often fails in 
its pretended effects when employed upon themselves. 

To say that no good has accrued to society from zealous 
yet prudential reformation, is to assert what is palpably 
false ; yet to conceal the great evils incurred by rash in- 
novation and ignorant fanaticism, would be avoiding a fair 
statement of the case. The greatest of Reformers, Time, 
as we are wisely taught by Bacon, innovates silently, but 
is more powerful than any other. We see in the life of 
man, how age reveals the errors of youth, and manhood 
suppresses the follies of immaturity. So in the age of the 
world, civilisation and custom must unite to eradicate (by 
degrees) the defects, the vices, the crimes of former ages. 
If the above is true of matters relating to the civil polity, 
to legislation and government, how much truer is it with 
regard to the growth and very existence of Christianity. 
We are to look for no new lights here: and a modern 



RELIGIOUS SATIRE. 1S3 

Apostle may be suspected on 'prima facie evidence, of being 
an impostor. The assumption of the character of Founder 
of a sect, implies a degree of pride and corresponding want 
of humility, hardly consistent with true piety. At the same 
time, it evinces rashness and ignorance. Modern religious 
reformers generally begin by discrediting the labors and 
talent of previous teachers, in order to raise the value of 
their own. In an attempt to go back to the standard of 
primitive Christianity, they discredit the succession of wise 
and good men, who have filled the interval with their pure 
thoughts and holy lives. 

In effect, too, they hurt their own cause, where they 
treat the ministers of religion with contumely ; for they 
destroy a respect for those external decorums, which are 
not only becoming in the best Christians, but considered 
no less than essential in the department of a polished gen- 
tleman. 

Enthusiasm is, at once, the strong and the weak point of 
the religious reformer, enthusiasm, real or assumed; the 
most powerful instrument by which to form the multitude, 
and the most vulnerable point of attack. 

The control of a multitude by the sympathetic feeling of 
enthusiasm may be spoken of as a species of animal or 
spiritual magnetism. We see the effect of it in such hands 
as those of Mahomet, Cromwell, Whitfield. Napoleon. But 
this is a vulgar passion, not the enthusiasm of noble na- 
tures for objects of equal worth. Ordinary religious enthu- 
siasm is both degrading and impious; degrading as it is 
irrational, and impious from presumption and familiarity. 
As to the vulnerability of enthusiasm, we only need to 
read Hudibras. Yet are we no believers in the sophism 
of "ridicule being the test of truth." It may furnish a 



134 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



searching test of artificial manners. It is a touchstone for 
absurdities in conduct. But religion is above it ; its prin- 
ciples are too sacred for such a connexion. The practices 
of fanatic religionists are, however, more absurd than any 
ridicule that can be heaped upon them, and they are fair 
game for the pen of the satirist. 

The truest Christians have been, in general, moderate 
in their views, no advocates of human perfectibility, no 
Fifth Monarchy men. Pious persons, with a vein of mys- 
ticism in their characters, as Norris, Fenelon, Herbert, or 
Farrar, may indulge themselves in raptures and ecstasies ; 
but these have a certain real beauty, and at least disturb 
not the peace of their neighbors. Modern ranters split the 
ears, while they would invade the souls of the groundlings, 
and seem to think the kingdom of Satan can be carried by 
the same means which toppled down the walls of Jericho. 

It is a little singular, that, with a single exception, the 
author of Hudibras, the keenest satires on religious extra- 
vagances, and the severest censure (however humorously 
allegorized) that has been passed on the defects most visible 
in the clerical character, should have come from the pens 
of churchmen. Yet such has been the case from the time 
of Erasmus to the days of the Rev. Sidney Smith, the most 
celebrated of living clerical wits, including, among other 
names in the interval, those of South, Eachard, and Swift, — 
a trio, that for wit, sense, and honesty, cannot be paralleled. 

Those who are most in the habit of railing at the clergy 
and at religious persons in general, show great ignorance 
and narrowness. They confound the worthy with the 
worthless, under a common denomination of hypocrites. 
It is a usual saying with such people, that they consider 
themselves as good Christians as any. Having seen villa- 



RELIGIOUS SATIRE. 



135 



ny and worldliness masked under the appearance of reli- 
gion, they conclude all Christianity to be a deception. 
This is as much as if one should pretend an accurate 
knowledge of human nature, from having filled the station 
of jailer all his life, and seen much crime. The Newgate 
calendar is but a chapter in the great Book of Life. Re- 
ligious satire is not for such readers, as it gives them ideas 
on one side, and that the worst side, which they possess 
neither inclination nor ability to rebut. Their situation 
has precluded the possibility of an acquisition of true 
views on this subject, and of seeing how much more good 
than evil there is in the world after all (wicked as it is), 
despite the sneers of the profligate and the scorn of the 
misanthrope. 



L I T E R A R Y 8 T U D I E S 



A COLLECTION OF 



MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 



BY 



W . A . JONES. 



VOL. II, 



NEW YORK: 

EDWARD WALKER, 111 FULTON-STREET. 

IS17. 



CONTENTS OF VOL. 11. 



FAOK 

I. PROSE OF BARROW, 1 

J J. THE POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET, 6 

in. THE ladies' library, 15 

IV. the early maturity OF GENIUS, 23 

V. NOTORIETY, 34 

VI. LETTERS, 41 

VII. POPE AND HIS FRIENDS, 46 

VIII. GRAY AND COWPER, 58 

IX. AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS, .... 62 

X. FEMALE NOVELISTS, 71 

XI. SINGLE-SPEECH POETS, .85 

XII. ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS, 96 

XIJI. RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY, 109 

XIV. TITLES, 119 

XV. MINSHULL's ESSAYES and CHARACTERES of a PRI- 
SON AND PRISONERS, 135 

XVr. ON PREACHING, , . . . . 142 



PROSE OF BARROW 



There is an eloquence of the reason as well as of the 
imagination and of the affections. Perhaps it is more 
firmly based than either, and produces in the end the 
surest effects. It is less captivating than the descriptive 
eloquence of Taylor ; it has less hold on the taste than the 
sentimental passages of Rousseau or Hazlitt, less touching 
than the pathos of Sterne or Mackenzie, less brilliant than 
the declamation of Burke or Macaulay : but it is anchored 
in truth ; it is founded in reality ; it convinces the under- 
standing. Finally, all eloquence must come to this. We 
may be captivated by the glittering flashes of a copious 
fancy, and charmed, for an hour, by the attractive graces 
of eloquence and manner ; but the only true eloquence is 
that which is always such, which equally interests a future 
age and a foreign nation, and which is the pure essence of 
the noblest reason, couched in the clearest, the most forci- 
ble, and the richest expression. Those brilliant contem- 
porary speakers, of whom we have only a traditional know- 
ledge, such as Dean Kirwan, Patrick Henry, and Emmett, 
are rather to be regarded as consummate actors than solid 
orators. 

To give the praise of finished oratory to the sermons of 

VOL. II. . 1 



Z LITERARY STUDIES. 

Barrow would be an extravagance of eulogy ; antl yet his 
fame is great, and his sermons most able, lie possesses 
the utmost fulness (this side of extravagance) in point of 
thouglit and expression ; yet we can hardly say as much 
of liis style and manner. The characteristic trait of Bar- 
row is his power of exhaustive analysis. lie is a perfect 
mental chemist, analyzing every topic into as many parts 
as it is composed of, and precipitating (so to speak) all the 
falsehood in it, leaving a clear solution of truth. Our 
divine is one of the most liberal-minded of men. He has 
a wide range of thought, and mines, as it were, in the very 
depth of his argument. He gives you every side of every 
subject he handles. He knows all the false appearances 
sophistry may be made to wear, as disguises of the truth. 
He is thoroughly informed of all the bearings of Jiis sub- 
ject, and leaves no part of it untouclied. Though without 
imagination, llarrow had such a fertility of intellect (so 
well cultivated was the soil), as to appear almost possess- 
ing invention in the way of topics and illustration. The 
secret of his invention lay in long and severe study, aided 
by a capacious and powerful and ready memory. 

Reason was the master faculty of Barrow's mind. He 
seems to have had but little fancy — no imagination ; not 
jnnchofan eye for nature — no humor — hardly anything 
like delicacy of sentiment. His understanding was a ro- 
bust, hard-working laculty. His analysis was very acute 
and tliorough — his logic exceeding close, searching, and 
patient. He had mucli and varied erudition, and a memory 
that was not crushed by the weight of it. This is an ar- 
gument for the original force of Barrow, as well as for 
most of the great old prose-writers, that their learning was 
not too much for tiieni. No foreign acquisitions could ob- 



PROSE OF BARROW. 



scuro the clear light of their own reason : learning served 



them for evidence, for illustration. But they never con- 
founded knowledge and wisdom, and knew as weH as the 
old dramatists, their grand compeers, that 



" The licart 
May <;ivc an useful lesson to the head." 

Hence, without vanity, they relied more on themselves 
than most scholars, who are too often mere pedants. 

It is worthy of remark, that most of Barrow's sermons 
are rather moral dissertations, than what we would call, at 
the present day, evangelical discourses. Barrow comes 
nearer to a teacher of moral philosophy, than the ordinary 
standard of modern preaching will allow. It was his 
practice to write a series of sermons on certain topics of 
practical ethics (none the less Christian, though some 
would have us think so) ; thus, he has four sermons on 
industry, eight on the tongue, &c., &c. He seldom wrote 
less than two, and frequently three, on a single text. 
Tliese arc complete moral treatises. Though, in one 
sense, this may he considered a defect, yet, in our view 
(perhaps mistaken), it is a merit. Preaching too often 
departs from the themes of daily importance — the ofiices 
of familiar duty. Most congregations require to he taught 
their moral, as well as their religious duties (both parts of 
the same great scheme, and essentially one). We have 
never heard the ortliodoxy of Barrow questioned, and yet 
it is certain he is more of a moral teacher than an Evan- 
gelical Divine. 

There is a palpable defect in Barrow. He is uniformly 
copious. He is often tedious. He is too apt to discuss a 



4 LITERARY STUDIES. 

trite theme, with all the exuberance of power he employs 
on one more obscure and less familiar. Moreover, he is 
interminable. Many laughable anecdotes are related of 
his power of continuance. Once, at a charity sermon, he 
detained the audience by a discourse of three hours and a 
half in length. In coming down from the pulpit, and 
being asked if he did not feel tired, he replied that " he 
began to be weary with standing so long." It must have 
been as wearisome for the audience (we should imagine) 
to sit still that space of time, unless the church was a dark 
one, the cushions soft, and the pews high. On another 
occasion, being reminded that the congregation at the Ab- 
bey liked short sermons, he was prevailed on (with much 
ado) to preach but one half of his original sermon, and 
that occupied an hour and a half. 

With these defects, however, that must have rendered 
him, to light hearers of the Word, a rather tiresome 
preacher, he is still a right sturdy, manly intellect of the 
true English breed. 

This intellectual robustness was joined to great strength 
of moral purpose and determined physical courage. Of 
this last quality, two remarkable instances occur to us. 
Being attacked at night by a powerful mastiff, he grappled 
with the animal, and almost choked him, before any assist- 
ance came. At sea, in the Mediterranean, the vessel in 
which he happened to be embarked was attacked by 
an Algerine corsair. Barrow could not be prevailed on 
to go below, but fought bravely with the crew. 

These traits of character cannot fail to impress us with 
the opinion of high respect for Barrow's force and energy. 

Though no wit, to be sure, in his sermons, unless a 
strong sense of propriety and the absence of it can be 



PROSE OF BARROW. O 

termed wit, yet he gave Rochester one day a notable re- 
proof, and foiled that courtly wit at his own weapons. 
Yet Barrow penned a definition of wit, amounting to an 
essay, which is a miracle of ingenuity of distinction and 
richness of expression. 

Charles II. used to call Barrow " an unfair preacher," 
for he left nothing for future preachers to glean — unless, 
he might have added, to make pretty free use of the labors 
of their predecessors. 

Lord Chatham enjoined on his son the constant study 
of Barrow, and Pitt declared he had his sermons almost by 
heart. 

To show the common injudiciousness of parents in esti- 
mating the talents of their children, the father of Barrow 
is said to have exclaimed, " If it pleased God to take away 
any of his children, he hoped it would be Isaak," regard- 
ing him as a miracle of stupidity, who afterwards proved 
the glory of his family. 



II. 



THE POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET 



In the list of clerical wits, comprehending some of the 
best writers of England, and the finest satirical humorists 
in the world,* the name of Corbet should always find a 
place ; yeihis jeux (V esprit and hon-mots are known only to 
the antiquary and retrospective critic. This pleasant cha- 
racter is known only from traditional anecdote and the 
memoirs of his contemporaries. His poems are scattered 
up and down a variety of poetical collections, and have 
only been collected together in the present century. His 
modesty would not allow the public acknowledgment of 
them during his life, neither would he suffer any of his 
sermons to be printed, though they are spoken of as rarely 
ingenious, and if at all answerable to his conversation and 
verses, they must have been delicate. The best account 
we can gather of this eccentric wit, we find in Aubrey ; 
and it is one of the most lively sketches in his collection. 
We transcribe it entire. " Richard Corbet, D.D., was 
the son of Vincent Corbet (better known ' by Poynter's 
name than by his owne'), who was a gardener at Twick- 
enham, as I have heard my old cosen Whitney say. He 
was a Westminster scholar ; old Parson Bussey, of All- 

* Fuller, Earle, South, Eachard, Swift, Sterne, and Sidney Smith. 



POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET. 7 

scottj in Warwickshire, went to school with him ; he would 
say he was a very handsome man, but something apt to 
abuse, and a coward. He was a student of Christ Church, 
in Oxford. He was very facetious, and a good fellow. 
One time he and some of his acquaintance being merry 
at Fryar Bacon's study (where was good beer sold), they 
were drinking on the leads of the house, and one of the 
scholars was asleep, and had a pair of good silk stockings 
on : Dr. Corbet (then M.A., if not B.D.) got a pair of 
scissors and cut them full of little holes; but when the 
other awakened, and perceived how and by whom he had 
been abused, he did chastise him, and made him pay for 
them. 

" After he was Doctor of Divinity, he sang ballads at the 
Crosse at Abingdon, on a market day. He and some of 
his camerades were at the taverne by the Crosse (which, 
by the way, was then the finest of England : I remember 
it when I was a freshman : it was admirable curious goth- 
ique architecture, and fine figures in the niches : 'twas 

one of those built by King for his queen). The 

ballad singer complained he had no custom, he could not 
put off his ballads. The jolly Doctor put off his gown, 
and puts on the ballad singer's leathern jockey ; and, be- 
ing a handsome man, and had a rare full voice, he pre- 
sently vended a great many, and had a full audience. 
After the death of Dr. Goodwin, he was made dean of 
Christ Church. He had a good interest with great men, 
as you may find in his poems, and with the then great 
favorite, the D. of Bucks ; his excellent wit was letter of 
recommendation to him. I have forgot the story, but at 
the same time that Dr. Fell thought to have carried it, 
Dr. Corbet put a pretty trick upon him to let him take a 



8 LITERARY STUDIES. 

journey on ])urpose to London, wlien lie liad already the 
grant of it. 

" He prcach't a sermon before the King at Woodstock (I 
suppose King James), but it happened that he was out ; on 
which occasion there were made these verses : 

A reverend dcane, 

With his band starch'd clcanc. 

Did preach before the King ; 
In his band string was spied 
A ring that was tied, 

Was not that a pretty thing? 

The ring, without doubt, 
Was the thing put him out, 

And made him Ibrget wind, was next ; 
For every one there 
Will say, I dare swear, 

lie handled it more than his text. 

" His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins 
was one of his cronies ; he was a jolly fat Dr., and a very 
good house-keeper. As Dr. Corbet and he were riding in 
Lob-lane, in wet weather ('tis an ordinary deep dirty lane), 
the coach fell, and Dr. Corbet said, that Dr. Stubbins was 
up to the elbows in mire, and he was up to the etboics in 
Stuhhins. Anno Domini 1628, he was made Bishop of 
Oxford, and I have heard that he had an admirable, grave, 
and venerable aspect. One time as he was confirming, 
the country people pressing in to sec the ceremony, said 
be, ^ Bcare off there, or Fll cmijirmc ye icith my staff. ^ 
Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man 
very bald, he turned to his chaplain, and said, ' Some dust, 
Lushington^ (to keep his hand from slipping). There was 
a man with a great venerable beard : said the Bishop, 



POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET. 9 

' You, behind the beard.^ His chaplain, Dr. Lushington, 
was a very learned and ingenious man, and they loved 
one another. The Bishop sometimes would take the key 
of the wine cellar, and he and his chaplain would go and 
lock themselves in, and be merry. Then first he lays 
down his episcopal hat — ' There lies the Di\' Then he 
put off his gown — * There lies the Bishop.' Then' twas 
— ' Here^s to thee, Corbet,'' and ' Here's to thee, Lushing- 
ton.' He was made Bishop of Norwich, 

A.D. 1632. His last words were, ' Good night, Lushing- 
ton.' .... His poems are pure natural wit, delight- 
ful and easie." 

In order to verify this criticism, we must produce some 
specimens of his talent and humorous satire. 

Corbet's poems are very few, and half of those indiffer- 
ent ; but the rest is pure gold. His forte is ironical eulogy, 
or humorous ridicule. Yet he has pure natural feeling, 
as shown in his Epitaphs. A certain turn for Rabelaisian 
jests and tricks, with an occasional palpable hit at the sec- 
taries, must have made him an episcopal bugbear to the 
Puritans of his day. And certainly his deportment, at 
times, little suited the dignity of his order. But he flouted 
at dignities, knowing his manhood to be much superior to 
any Bishopric. He was something between Archdeacon 
Paley and the Clerk of Copmanhurst, while he also added 
a romantic fancy peculiar to himself. He was a sincere 
Christian, a reasonable theologian, a moderator, a wit, a 
good fellow. We need not apprehend but that at proper 
times he bore himself like a brave old bishop, and always 
stood erect in the integrity of a man. His journey to 
France is the most finished of his sportive effusions. 

VOL. II, 2 



10 LITERARY STUDIES. 

DR. CORBET'S JOURNEY INTO FRANCE 

I went from England into France, 
Nor yet to learn to cringe or dance, 

Nor yet to ride or fence ; 
Nor did I go like one of those 
That do return with half a nose 

They carried from hence. 

But I to Paris rode along. 

Much like John Dory in the song. 

Upon a holy tide. 
I on an ambling nag did get, 
I trust he is not paid for yet, 

And spurr'd him on each side. 

And to Saint Dennis fast we came. 
To see the sights of Notre-Dame, 

The man that shews them snaffles ; 
Where who is apt for to believe, 
May see our Ladie's right arm sleeve. 
And eke her old pantofles ; 

Her breast, her milk, her very gown 
That she did wear in Bethlehem town, 

When in the inn she lay. 
Yet all the world knows that's a fable, 
For so good clothes ne'er lay in stable 

Upon a lock of hay. 

No carpenter could, by his trade, 
Gain so much coin as to have made 

A gown of so rich stuff. 
Yet they, poor fools, think for their credit, 
They may believe old Joseph did it, 

'Cause he deserved enough. 

There is one of the crosses nails, 
Which whoso sees his bonnet vails. 



POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET. 11 

And if he will, may kneel. 
Some say 'twas false, 'twas never so. 
Yet, feeling it, thus much I know, 

It is as true as steel. 

There is a lanthorn which the Jews, 
When Judas led them forth, did use, 

It weighs my weight downright. 
But to believe it you must think 
The Jews did put a candle in't, 

And then 't was very light. 

There's one Saint there hath lost his nose ; 
Another 's head, but not his toes. 

His elbow and his thumb. 
But when that we had seen the rags 
We went to th' Inn and took our nags. 

And so away did come. 

Thus wrote our merry episcopal satirist, of superstitious 
relics, and all the trumpery of the Romish Church. The 
rest of the poem is occupied with certain exquisite strokes 
of local satire, and a fine historical portrait of Louis XIII., 
truer than most historians would have painted it — and in 
far finer style. 

Corbet wrote a number of elegies, though his vein flowed 
more after the manner of Sir John Suckling, than in the 
style of the tender Tibullus. The elegy upon his father's 
death is respectful and afiectionate : that upon Dr. Donne, 
ingenious and well turned : 

AN EPITAPH ON DR. DONNE— dean of st. Paul's. 

He that would write an Epitaph for thee. 
And do it well, must first begin to be 
Such as thou wert ; for none can truly know 
Thy worth, thy life, but he that hath liv'd so. 



12 LITERARY STUDIES. 

He must have wit to spare, and to hurl down 
Enough to help the gallants of the town ; 
He must have learning plenty, best the laws, 
Civil and Common, to judge any cause ; 
Divinity, great store above the rest. 
Not of the last edition, but the best ; 
He must have language, travel, all the arts. 
Judgment to use, or else he wants thy parts : 
He must have friends, the highest, able to do, 
Such as Maecenas, and Augustus, too. 
He must have such a sickness, such a death, 
Or else his vain descriptions come beneath. 
Who then shall write an Epitaph for thee, 
He must be dead first ; let t' alone for me. 

Here follow two lively pieces, having the form of Epi- 
taph, but with more of a satirical than of an elegiac spirit 
in them : 

TO THE GHOST OF ROBERT WISDOMS. 

Thou, once a body, but now aire, 
Arch botcher of a psalme or prayer, 

From Carfax come ; 
And patch me up a zealous lay. 
With an old ever and ay. 

Or, all and some. 

Or such a spirit lend mee. 

As may a hymne down send mee, 

To purge my braine : 
So Robert look behind thee, 
Lest Turk or Pope doe find thee. 

And goe to bed againe. 

ON THOMAS J ONCE. 

Here for the nonce, * 

Came Thomas Jonce, 



POEMS OF BISHOP CORBET. 13 

In St. Giles Church to lie. 
None Welsh before. 
None Welshman more, 

Till Shon Clerk die. 

I'll toll the bell, 
I'll ring his knell. 
He died well, 
He's sav'd from hell ; 
And so farewell 

Tom Jonce. 

Our last extract shall be in a different strain from any 
of the foregoing. It is a poem addressed to his son Vin- 
cent Corbet on his birthday, at the age of three years. 

What I shall leave thee, none can tell 
But all shall say I wish thee well ; 
.1 wish thee, Vin, before all Wealth, 
Both bodily and ghostly health : 
Nor too much wit, nor wealth, come to thee. 
So much of either may undo thee. 
I wish thee learning, not for show. 
Enough for to instruct and know ; 
Not such as gentlemen require. 
To prate at table or at fire. 
I wish thee all thy mother's graces. 
Thy father's fortunes, and his places. 
I wish thee friends, and one at court. 
Not to build on, but support; 
To keep thee, not in doing many 
Oppressions, but from suffering any. 
I wish thee peace in all thy ways. 
Nor lazy nor contentious days ; 
And when thy soul and body part, 
As innocent as now thou art. 

Thus much from merry, wise, and kind-hearted Bishop 
Corbet. 



in 



THE LADIES' LIBRARY 



That admirable manual of " les petUes morales j^^ and even 
of higher matters occasionally, the Spectator, contains a 
paper which we hesitate not to accept as a just specimen 
of cotemporary satire on female education ; we refer to 
the catalogue of a Ladies' Library. This heterogeneous 
collection embraces heroical romances and romancing his- 
tories, the ranting tragedies of the day, with the libertine 
comedies of the same period. In a word, it leads us to in- 
fer pretty plainly the insignificant pretensions the gentle- 
woman of Queen Anne's day could lay to anything like 
refinement of education, or even a correct propriety in dress 
and demeanor. Tell me your company, and I will disclose 
your own character ; speak that I may know you, are trite 
maxims ; but give me a list of your favorite authors is by 
no means so common, though at least as true, a test. The 
literary and indirectly the moral depravity of taste exhi- 
bited by the women of that age, is easily accounted for, 
when we once learn the fashionable authors and the indif- 
ferent countenance given to any authors but those of the 
most frivolous description. The queen herself was an 
illiterate woman, and we are told never once had the curi- 
osity to look into the classic productions of Pope. King 



THE ladies' library. ' 15 

William, the preceding sovereign, was so ignorant of books 
and the literary character, as to offer Swift, with whom he 
had been agreeably prepossessed, the place of a captain of a 
regiment of horse. 

Indulging ourselves in a rapid transition, we pass from 
this era to the epoch of Johnson and Burke, and Goldsmith 
and Sheridan ; we come to the reign of George III. Here 
we find the scene altered. From the gay saloon we are 
dropped as if by magic, into the library or conversation 
room. We read not of balls, but of literary dinners and 
aesthetic teas, and we meet for company, not thoughtless, 
dressy dames of fashion and minions of the goddess of 
pleasure, but grave, precise professors in petticoats, women 
who had exchanged a world of anxiety for the turn of a 
head-dress, or the shape of a flounce for an equally wise 
anxiety about the philosophy of education, the success 
of their sonnets and tragedies, and moral tales for the 
young. The pedantry of authorship and dogmatic conver- 
sation superseded the more harmless pedantry of dress. 
Then we read of the stupidest company in the world, which 
arrogated to itself the claim of being the best. A race of 
learned ladies arose ; bas-bleus, the Montagues, the Mores, 
the Sewards, the Chapones, patronized by such prosing old 
formalists as Doctors Gregory and Aiken, and even by one 
man of vigorous talent, Johnson, and one man of real ge- 
nius, Richardson. The last two endured much, because 
they were flattered much. 

When we speak thus contemptuously of learned ladies, 
we intend to express a disgust at the pretensions of that 
name. Genuine learning can never be despised, whoever 
may be its possessor ; but of genuine learning it is not 
harsh to suspect a considerable deficiency where there is 



IG LITERARY STUDIES. 

SO much of display and anxious rivalry. Where the 
learning is exact and solid, it is to be remembered that 
many departments are utterly unsuited to the female mind ; 
wliero, at best, little can be accomplished, and that of a 
harsh repulsive nature. We want no Dacicrs, no Somer- 
villes, no Marcets, but give us an you will as many Inch- 
bal()s, Burncys, Edgcworths, Miss Barretts, as can be had 
for love or money. 

We believe the question as to the relative sexual dis- 
tinctions of intellectual character, is now generally con- 
sidered as settled. There is allowed to be a species of 
genius essentially feminine. Equality is no more arro- 
gated than superiority of ability, and it would be as wisely 
arrogated. The most limited observation of life and the 
most superficial acquaintance with books, must cflectually 
demonstrate the superior capacity of man for the great 
works of life and speculation. It is true, great geniuses 
are rare and seldom needed, and the generality of women 
rank on a par with the generality of men. In many cases, 
women of talent surpass men of an equal calibre of mere 
talent, through other and constitutional causes — a greater 
facility of receiving and transmitting impressions, greater 
instinctive subtlety of apprehension, and a livelier sympa- 
thy. We cordially admit that female intellect, in the ordi- 
nary concerns of life and the current passages of society, 
has often the advantage of masculine understanding. 
Cleverness outshines solid ability, and a smart woman is 
much more showy than a profound man. In certain walks 
of authorship, too, women are preeminently successful : in 
easy narrative of real or fictitious events (in the last im- 
plying a strain of ready invention), in lively descriptions 
of natural beauty or artificial manners ; in the develop- 



THE ladies' library. 17 

ment of the milder sentiment of love ; in airy, comic ridi- 
cule. On the other hand, the highest attempts of women 
in poetry have uniformly failed. We have read of no 
female epic of even a respectable rank : those who have 
written tragedies, have written moral lectures (of an infe- 
rior sort) like Hannah More ; or anatomies of the passions, 
direct and formal, like Joanna Baillie ; or an historical 
sketch, as Rienzi. We are apt to suspect that the personal 
charms of Sappho prove too much for the admirers of her 
poetic rhapsodies, otiierwisc Longinus has done her foul 
injustice; for the fragment he quotes is to be praised and 
censured solely for its obscurity. This would have been 
a great merit in Lycophron. 

In the volume of British Poetesses, edited by Mr. Dyce, 
it is astonishing to find how little real poetry he has been 
able to collect out of the writings of near a century of 
authors, scattered over the surface of five or six centuries. 
It must be allowed that some of the finest short pieces by 
female writers have appeared since the publication of that 
selection. In the volume referred to, much sensible verse 
and some sprightly copies of verse occur ; a fair share of 
pure reflective sentiment, delivered in pleasing language 
rarely rising above correctness ; of high genius there is 
not a particle, — no pretensions to sublimity or fervor. The 
best piece and the finest poem, we tiiink, ever composed 
by woman, is the charming poem of Auld Robin Gray. 
Tliat is a genuine bit of true poesy, and perfect in the 
highest department of tlie female imagination, in the 
pathos of domestic tragedy. In the present century we 
have Mrs. Howitt and Mrs. Southey, but chief of all, Miss 
Barrett. The finest attempts of the most pleasing writer 
of this class, do not rise so high as the delightful ballad 

2* 



18 LITERARY STUDIES. 

above named. They are sweet, plaintive, moral strains, 
the melodious notes of a lute, tuned by taper fingers in a 
romantic bower, not the deep, majestic, awful tones of the 
great organ, or the spirited and stirring blasts of the trum- 
pet. The ancient bard struck wild and mournful, or 
hearty and vigorous notes from his harp — perchance 
placed "on a rock whose frowning brow," &c., and striv- 
ing with the rough symphonies of the tempest ; but the 
sybil of modern days plays elegant and pretty, or soft and 
tender airs upon the flageolet or accordion, in the boudoir 
or saloon. 

A poet is, from the laws both of physiology and philolo- 
gy — masculine. His vocation is manly, or rather divine. 
And we have never heard any traits of feminine character 
attributed to the great poet (in the Greek sense), the 
Creator of the universe. The muses are represented as 
females, but then they are the inspirers, never the com- 
posers, of verse. Women should be the poet's muse, as 
she is often the poet's theme. Let female beauty then sit 
for her portrait instead of being the painter. Let poets 
chaunt her charms, but let her not spoil a fair ideal image 
by writing bad verses. If all were rightly viewed, a 
happy home would seem preferable to a seat on Parnassus, 
and the Fountain of Content would furnish more palatable 
draughts than the Font of Helicon. The quiet home is 
not always the muses' bower ; though we trust the muses' 
bower is placed in no turbulent society. 

Women write for women. They may entertain, but 
cannot, from the nature of the case, become instructors to 
men. They know far less of life, their circle of expe- 
rience is confined. They are unfitted for many paths of 
active exertion, and consequently are rendered incapable 



THE ladies' library. 19 

of forming just opinions on many matters. We do not 
include a natural incapacity for many studies, and as 
natural a dislike for many more. Many kinds of learn- 
ing, and many actual necessary pursuits and practices, it 
is deemed improper for a refined woman to know. How, 
then, can a female author become a teacher of man ? 

Literature would miss many pleasant associations if the 
names of the best female writers were expunged from a 
list of classic authors, and the world would lose many de- 
lightful works — the novel of sentiment and the novel of 
manners, letter-writers, moral tales for children, books of 
travels, gossipping memoirs — Mrs. Inchbald, Madame D'Ar- 
blay. Miss Edgeworth, Lady M. W. Montague, Miss Mar- 
tineau, and Miss Sedgwick, with a host besides.- Women 
have sprightliness, cleverness, smartness, though but little 
wit. There is a body and substance in true wit, with a 
reflectiveness rarely found apart from a masculine intellect. 
In all English comedy, we recollect but two female writers 
of sterling value — Mrs. Centlivre and Mrs. Cowley, and 
their plays are formed on the Spanish model, and made up 
of incident and intrigue, much more than of fine repartees 
or brilliant dialogue. We know of no one writer of the 
other sex, that has a high character for humor — no Rabe- 
lais, no Sterne, no Swift, no Goldsmith, no Dickens, no Ir- 
ving. The female character does not admit of it. 

Women cannot write history. It requires too great so- 
lidity, and too minute research for their quick intellects. 
They write, instead, delightful memoirs. Who, but an 
antiquary or historical commentator, would not rather read 
Lucy Hutchinson's Life of her Husband, than any of the 
professed histories of the Commonwealth — and exchange 
Lady Fanshawe for the other royalist biographers ? 



VIO i,rn.i;.\i;v .siuiuiis, 

NtMtlior nro wouwix to linn |n)lilii'iunM or on\lor.««. Wo 
lio|n> Miner to luMir ol" ii IimumIo Uiirlu^ ; s\\v wotild bo an 
ovcrluMirin;; l(Miu!i;>;ml. A s\)'\co ol" ji ImIciiI lor scolding, 
is [\\v liii;li(\s| ll»nu (•!" ("lo(|uoiu'(* \\v cim consricntiously 
allow iho liidios. 

\N'oiu(Mi Irid mon> limn ihcy liiinlv, iuid (somclimos) say 
nu)r(i tliui) llioy i\o. Tlu'V ini» foiis('(|U(.M»lly hi-llcr jidapUul 
lo d(>S(.'ril»o s(<nliin(Mils, tlu\ii l») sprculalo on causos and 
rlliMMs. 'riiov iirc more iit homo in w rilin;'- Icllors, tlmii 
InuMs on politifid economy. 

TIk* [)ro|»iM' larullirs in NNtMuoii lo ciilliviih^ most assidu- 
ously nvi\ tho UxHio and liio religious stMilimonl ; llio lirst, 
as {\\r lojuliii;; (rail oCtlio inU^lKn'tual ; and llio lasl, as tlio 
gtniM'nini; j)o\\(M- of llio moral ioi\slihilion. (iivo a womau 
a |)ur(> lasl(> and liioli jn'int'iplos, and slu^ is salo from tlu> 
arls of \\\o wiliosl liliuniino. Lcl Ium* liav(> tdl ollior j^iOs 
l>ul lli(\s«<, and sho is roniparalivcly doltMicoloss. 'Tasto 
purilios tlu> hoarl as \V(>II as llio iioad, and rtdigion 
slivngtluMis liolli. Tho sin>n<M>sl pnnxMisiiit's lo ploasuro 
an* not. so o[\c\\ lia» moans of disorao(> and ruin as tlio 
<'ar(>lossnoss iA' i;Mioranl virlu(\ and an un(Mdiii;ht(MUMl 
moral sons(>. This makt^s all llio dilliM'iMu-t' in lla^ ^vorld, 
l>ol\vo(Mi thi> daUi',l»tor o\' n \hhh' country man, and llu* cluld 
o( an (Hhu'aUMl j.';(>ntl(Muan. l>oth havo tho san»(* dosirt\s, 
l»ut how dilVoHMilly dir<H'l(Ml and oontrollod, \ c\ wo llnd 
niuoloon laps(>s from virtuo in llu^ oni^ oaso, w horo m (^ lind 
ono in tho olhor. 

noli(<vini; ihat whal dors nol inltM*(\st, iloos not htMiolit 
iho mind, w»> Wi>uld a\oid all podanlio UnMurt^s lo >\onuMi, 
inx all suhjrots lo w hioh thi\v disooviM" any aviM'sion. 
Study shouKl he mado a pliNisuro. and roadini^- puro rocnv- 
aliou. In a general souse, we would say the best works 



I'll I', I.ADIF.s' MI'.UAHV. 2 1 

(iii- fl'iiiul(! r(!ii(l(irM iiio lliosn lliul, lend lo form tlio l«i)^ln!Ht 
cloinoHlic cliiiniclnr. VVorlt.s of llio liii^dioHl, urui^imilion, 
UM boin;^ abovo Lliiit coiHlilion, uitd Ncioiililic iiuliiorH, vvlio 
nil(lr(!MM u (lil)i!r(!iil, (;Iiihm oI fiiciillit^M, iiro bolJi liiiHtiilubli*. 
An jidiiiiniMn vvilli may iiol, iclisli llin Hul)Iiiriil.y of Milloii 
or llninlcl. ; iitid a (diarniiiin coiiipanioti Ix; i<i;iioi'aiil. of liin 
rxiNl,<;u(;() ol" Hucli a Hcioiic(! a.s AI^Mtbra. A HUjxMlicial 
a(;()iiaiiil,an(!o vvilb \.\ui (ibitiioiilM of l.bo pbyHical Huioiic«.'H 
iw worse lliiiii lolnl iiini(Mjiiiiiiilaii<;(! vvilli ibnii. 

ll(;li;^ioii Hbould be; laii'.dil. as a H(!i>l.iin(!iil, not ttH an 
MbHlracl, priiHjijiIo, or in doctrinal poHilionH, a HonliinonI, of 
lovo and graloful obcidiftnco ; nioraiily, i»n|)r(!HH<!d iih IJkj 
|»ra<;li<!al cxcrclHH of Hiilf-dcniiil and aclivn bciMiVobMuro. 
In (vtiirscM of rjMidin/^, loo inindi iM laid down of u dry na- 
l.uni. (jirls aro diMfj;iiMl(!d willi Iddion.s a(;(;oiinlH of bnllicM 
and n(ij.M)l.ialionH, dal,«!M and nanicH. Tiui moral Hbonid bn 
oduorul bcsl. I'lW'A lltr IImi llniiilo licuil, and IVom iIk; ro- 
manlic prsriodo, and tlio r(!iy;nH of foinabi Hov(5r()i;^nM, or 
<'[)o(dis wlicii woirmn bidd a vory |)roniin«!nl, jdaco in 
l.b(j «l,at(?, or in |)ul)lic, i(';<ard. Wo wonid liavn W(»m<!n 
a(l(i(il,ional() wivcH, olxidicnl. daii^jilrrH, nf^rooiUilo (;om|)a- 
nioiiH, Hkilfnl (iconomiHlH, jndicioiiH fiionds ; bnl. we- nnjHl. 
oonfoHN it docN not. full wilbiii onr Hclionio to mako lli<-m 
Jr^aslalorH or luvvyciM, dijilonmliMtH or [)olili(;ianH. Wo 
tlw^rtdiirc! Iliink niin; lciilli:i of all liintoi'y is absolnlidy nso- 
l(!HH f()r all wonn!!!. Too many nuilly ^ood bio^^rapbioH 
of i^rvcid and ^"[ood imtn and womrin can liardly bo i«;ad, 
and will Ix; read l.o irnioli trvcnUu- advanla^M) iban biHlorif^M, 
as iboy leave a (bdinite and individual im|n(!HMion. Tlio 
r(!adin;j; <i;ood books of lrav(!lH is, next lo ^oing over llie 
jnoinid in jteison, llie besl. m(;lbod of lil.ndying goojfrM|»liy . 



22 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Grammar and rhetoric* (after a clear statement of the 
elementary chief rules) are best learnt in the perusal of 
classic authors, the essayists, &c. ; and, in the same way, 
the theory of taste and the arts. The most important of 
accomplishments is not systematically treated in any sys- 
tem — conversation. But a father and mother, of educa- 
tion, can teach this better than any professor. Expensive 
schools turn out half-trained pupils. Eight years at home, 
well employed, and two at a good but not fashionable 
school, are better than ten years spent in the most popular 
female seminary, conducted in the ordinary style. 

* The benefit flowing from these studies is chiefly of a negative 
character. 



IV. 



THE EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS, 



We design the present article rather as a sketch of literary 
statistics, a table of instances, to illustrate the general prin- 
ciple we aim to establish, than as anything like a complete 
survey or accurate digest of the subject which it would 
require a volume to contain. We consider the fact as hav- 
ing a historical basis, as founded in the history of letters, 
that true genius comes to maturity much sooner than is 
generally supposed. In a word, we have merely collected 
a number of witnesses to confirm the maxim stated by 
Steele, though in a rather restricted form. It occurs in a 
paper of the Lover, number twenty-two : "I am apt to 
think that before thirty, a man's natural and acquired parts 
are at that strength, with a little experience, to enable him 
(if he can be enabled) to acquit himself well in any busi- 
ness or conversation he shall be admitted to." 

The vulgar error is to rate the growth of the individual 
intellect of the original with the ordinary progress of "the 
common mind ;" to measure the giant by the common 
standard of human stature. This is evidently absurd. Yet 
no error is so common as to attempt to depress cleverness 
by sneers at the youthful age of the aspirant, like the 
taunts of Walpole directed against Pitt, and like those of 



24 LITERARY STUDIES. 

every dull man, of middle age, who has a fixed position 
(beyond which he is not likely to rise), at those who are 
evidently fast rising above him. No young man of talent, 
but has had enemies such as these to encounter ; men who 
seem to take a certain fiendish delight, and cherish a mali- 
cious pleasure in seeking to depress everything like genu- 
ine enthusiasm and the buoyant ambition of the bright boy 
or the brilliant young man. This arises half from sheer 
malice, and as much from pure ignorance of the nature and 
temperament of genius. When the " climber upward " 
has gained his place among his peers, then these miserable 
flatterers cringe and fawn as basely as they formerly ma- 
ligned and ridiculed him ; and would fain crowd out of 
sight his old friends and staunch adherents. In his green 
age and budding season the youth of genius craves and re- 
quires sympathy. It is with him, especially (and, in a 
measure, with all men), an intellectual want, as evident as 
the coarsest necessary elements of existence. 

By early maturity of genius we mean no prodigies of 
childish or boyish talent — such we always distrust, as un- 
healthy prematureness, generally resulting in a feeble man- 
hood. Wonderful boys are almost always dull men. No 
particular point of time can be fixed, but manly intellects 
are at their maturity somewhere between twenty-five and 
thirty, and in good constitutions, this vigor and freshness 
remain sometimes to a great age. Youth is a heavy charge 
to lay against any writer, yet one becoming daily of less 
weight. Surely it is a season which furnishes qualities 
and feelings not to be expected in later life, and at least to 
be cherished for that reason. To the contemners of youth- 
ful genius, we would reply, in the words of the admirable 
Cowley, himself an example of precocity of talent: "It is 



EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. 25 

a ridiculous folly to laugh at the stars because the moon 
and the sun shine brighter." Let every captious critic, 
also, read Bacon's exquisite essay on '' Youth and Age," 
in which he will find the truest justice allotted to each pe- 
riod of this our mortal life. 

The majority of true poets have, as a general rule, pro- 
duced their best works at a very early age, comparatively. 
A very few distinguished instances, on the other side of the 
question, cannot affect the principles we aim to establish, 
but rather by especial inference, as they furnish the excep- 
tions, so far they go to establish the general maxim. Youth 
is naturally the season of enjoyment, and genial enjoyment 
as naturally gives birth to the sweetest, the most cordial, the 
delicatest strains of the muse. Yet we do not mean by youth 
the season of childhood, or boyhood, but the period of mature 
adolescence, from twenty-four to thirty. Very many fine 
poets have actually done their hest before even this epoch ; 
and all, who have ever become eminent for the exercise of 
the imaginative faculty, have discovered some signs at 
least of its existence while in their teens : a very small 
number of great names being excluded. In a life of the 
classic English poets, we find but rare examples of late po- 
etical genius ; Chaucer, Dryden, Young, Johnson, Cow- 
per, Milton, who composed Paradise Lost, about middle 
life, yet wrote Comus at the age of twenty-six, when it was 
first performed as a Masque at Ludlow castle, in Wales. 
In the drama, where one might justly admit a late develop- 
ment of poetical power, inasmuch as that department of 
poetry demands more and more cultivated faculties than 
any other : even in comedy, requiring a close observation 
of manners, and a keen eyesight into characters, we still 
find the capital writers producing their master-pieces, 



26 LITERARY STUDIES. 

while other men are hardly fitted by reading and a know- 
ledge of life, even to criticise them. Thus, Shakspeare's 
first play was printed in his twenty-seventh year : Jonson's 
Every Man in his Humor, with those admirable portraits 
of the braggadocio in Bobadil, and of the jealous husband, 
in Kitely, was written in his twenty-second year. The 
last play of Farquhar, the Recruiting Officer, appeared a 
few weeks before his death, which occurred when he was 
only twenty-seven, and his other delightful comedies were 
produced some years earlier. Congreve's Old Bachelor 
was the fruit of his college years, and appeared in his 
twenty-first year. The masterpiece of English comedy, 
Love for Love, only two years afterwards. Sheridan's 
Rivals, inferior only to the School for Scandal, was per- 
formed in his twenty-fourth year. The first fruits of Goethe 
and Schiller's dramatic genius (unlike those of the other 
writers we have quoted, in not being by any means their 
best, yet as evincing power and future dramatic skill), 
Goetz of Berlinchen, and the Robbers, at the respective 
ages of twenty and twenty-one. Sheridan Knowles, the 
earliest of living Encrlish Dramatists, is the last instance 
we remember of early dramatic genius. 

In prose fiction, requiring at least equal knowledge of 
character and manners, with comedy — we have Roderick 
Random, perhaps Smollett's best work, at twenty-seven, and 
the Man of Feeling at twenty-six. Fielding, Sterne and 
Richardson, were later. But in the present century Hood, 
Hook, and Dickens, unquestionably wrote their best works 
earliest. 

Among the miscellaneous poets, Hall's first, and last, 
volume of poetry, full of vigor, and mature knowledge of 
life, was published in his twenty-third year. Warton ad- 



EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. 27 

mits that Donne's best poetry was written before the age 
of twenty-five. Cowley is generally considered preco- 
cious : his first volume appeared when he was a boy of 
thirteen. But his best poetry was the growth of his later 
years. Pope's Ode to Solitude is often referred to. He 
was ten years old when he wrote it : a greater miracle 
was his producing such a body of acute criticism, as his 
famous Essay on Criticism displays, when he was but 
twenty-one. Akenside's chief work, the Pleasures of the 
Imagination, at twenty-three. Collins's noble odes were 
written at twenty-six. Burns's first volume was first printed 
when the poet was twenty-eight ; under favorable influen- 
ces, his genius had undoubtedly blossomed much sooner. 
Classic English poetry in this nineteenth century has 
been written by young poets, and even the master of 
them all, still living, wrote his characteristic pieces quite 
early. Wordsworth's first volume came out at the age of 
twenty-three ; the Pleasures of Hope at twenty-one : the 
wonderful Ancient Mariner, in which some critics can see 
nothing, was printed at seventeen ; Byron's second canto 
of Childe Harold, at twenty-four. Of contemporary Eng- 
lish poets, we believe all of them without exception pro- 
duced their finest things at a very early age — Proctor, 
Moore, Hunt, Tennyson, Miss Barrett, Hood, and a bril- 
liant galaxy of smaller stars. Two, perhaps, in their 
separate walks, the finest poets of this century (Goethe, 
Schiller, and Wordsworth excepted), died very early ; 
Shelley at thirty, and Keats at twenty-four. We reserve 
a page for American Bards, in conclusion, when we 
come to speak of American Literature, and of this very 
striking feature in it of the early age at which our finest 
writers have done their best things, and of an equally 



28 LITERARY STUDIES. 

singular trait, discernible in the fact, that after a com- 
paratively early period, they either ceased to produce, 
or fell off very considerably. Meantime, we notice a 
fact as remarkable as the early maturity of genius, i. e., 
of the creative power, in imaginative productions, in 
the history of those eminent for critical and speculative 
ability. The first and greatest critics, moralists, and prose 
writers, performed, what we are apt to conceive a still 
greater wonder, in exhibiting at so youthful a period, un- 
common abilities, in departments generally consigned to 
the man of tried experience and mature years. Some of 
the greatest monarchs and generals the world has ever seen, 
performed feats, the most brilliant, while quite young men. 
It is only necessary to refer to Alexander the Great, 
Csesar, the first Prince of Orange, his son Maurice, Wil- 
liam III. of England, Gustavus Adolphus, Eugene, Marl- 
borough, Peter the Great, Charles of Sweden, Napoleon, 
and Clive. 

There is a genius for criticism, for metaphysical inves- 
tigation and politics, as well as for poetry or any of the 
arts. We will select our illustrations of this at random. 
Bacon, at thirteen, entered Cambridge : at sixteen wrote 
against the Aristotelian logic — at nineteen put forth a 
pamphlet on the existing state of Europe : at twenty-six 
(some say at fifteen) planned the Novum Organon. Burke 
wrote his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, at the age 
of twenty-six. Macaulay has remarked a wonderful coin- 
cidence (certainly in itself unaccountable, yet not con- 
fined to those two admirable writers) ; that the judgment 
was the faculty first developed in them, but that fancy 
came much later; that at middle age, they were most just 
and logical and comprehensive in their sober speculations. 



EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. 29 

yet then also just in the dawn of that gorgeous eloquence, 
which was richest in their latest works. Hazlitt furnishes 
a similar instance. His first work, on the Principles of 
Human Action, was published in his twenty-fifth year. 
He says he was engaged upon it for eight years ; and we 
should suspect the same thing from internal evidence. It 
is hard, dry and jejune : yet close and rigidly logical, 
with, as Macintosh thinks, much power of metaphysical 
speculation. How different is this from his Table-Talk 
and Plain Speakers and Lectures : abounding not only in 
subtle and deep thought, but picturesque, rich, eloquent 
and glancing. Brown's Religio Medici was the work of 
his twenty-seventh or eighth year. Brown, the Scotch 
metaphysician, whose later style was flowery to excess, 
and even effeminate in a high degree, composed a Tract 
on Causation, which at once gave him high rank as a me- 
taphysician, when he had not reached his eighteenth year. 
The elegant Hume's first philosophical essays, written or at 
least planned at College, were published at twenty-six, and 
are so much less readable than his easy historical narra- 
tion, that Hazlitt himself designates the Treatise on Na- 
ture, this very work, as " a metaphysical chokepear." 
Among the Poets, we omitted one, who was almost as 
much of a critic, Beaumont, who died at twenty-nine : 
having written the Maid's Tragedy (a delicate as well as 
judicious work) at twenty-one. Pope comes in, for critical 
skill, in his capital versified Essay on Criticism at twenty- 
one, and in his choice letters, those to Wycherly, at seven- 
teen. A few of the great old English Divines, we have 
looked into, for this particular purpose. We gather these 
results : Fuller, the wit and church historian's first work, 
came out when he was twenty-three. Taylor was Laud's, 



«U LITERARY STUDIES. 

and South, Clarendon's chaplain ; and known universally 
for tlicir cioquence, at twenty-seven. Butler corresponded 
with Dr. Clarke, while a boy at school. 

A few miscellaneous instances. Folltham's Resolves 
was written at eighteen, a renuirkablo instance of youthful 
judgment. 

Tlie sagacious, brave Burleigh, first iicld ollice at court 
when just twenty-two. Sir Thomas More, before him, 
Jiad been elected to parliament at the same age. Pitt was 
chancellor of the exchequer before he was twenty-five. 
Ilallam, while a collegian, planned his history of the Mid- 
dle Ages. The founders of the Edinburgh Review, and 
the ablest writers for it, were all of them young men — 
Jeffrey, Macintosh, Scott, Brougham. 

Certain persons cannot see, tiiat judgment, where it is the 
nicest, most tolerant, and comprclicnsive, and exact, is not 
always the fruit of study nor the growth of experience. It 
ofl:en precedes both ; and it is an instinctive faculty — an 
original talent — applying this truth to the instances of a lov^ 
judgment in matters (not of literature or })hilosophy, as we 
have considered it) relating to ordinary business. Steele 
has a paper of excellent sense and liberal tendency in the 
Lover, written with his accustomed facility and grace. 
Tile writer of the thoughts on the subject is supposed to 
bo a correspondent, a young man, who complains bitterly 
of " a general calamity that obstructs or suspends the ad- 
vancement of the younger men in the pursuit of their for- 
tune" — (a complaint not to be rashly made in this country). 
'• Tile utmost inconveniences are owing to the difficulty we 
meet with in being admitted into the society of men in 
years, and adding thereby tiie early knowledge of men and 
business to that of books, for the reciprocal improvement 



EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. 31 

of each other. One of fifty as naturally imagines the 
same insufficiency in one of thirty, as he of thirty does of 
one of fifteen, and each age is thus left to instruct itself hy 
the natural course of its own reflection and experience." 
Further on, he remarks thus : " Of the common divisions 
of business, which everybody knows are directed by form, 
and require rather diligence and honesty than ^rave ability 
in the execution." Truly enougii, most business is purely 
mechanical ; and the so-styled learned professions are as 
mechanical in their pedantic adherence to forms, as any 
branch of mechanics. The true conclusion Steele aims at, 
is couched in the following passage, which appears to us to 
hit the truth with accuracy and justice: — "A good judg- 
ment will not only supply, but go beyond experience ; for 
the latter is only a knowledge that directs us in the dispatch 
of matters future, from the consideration of matters past of 
the same nature ; but the former is a perpetual and equal 
direction in everything that can happen, and does not fol- 
low, but makes tlic precedent that guides tlie other." 

If we come nearer home, and take our examples from 
American literature, we shall be taught to look with gene- 
rosity on young writers, and take heed lest we merit the 
wise censure of Cowley, who has written, " it is an envi- 
ous frost, that which nips the blossoms, because they appear 
quickly." Hardly an instance in American literature of a 
late writer of the first class, can be referred to. Our poets 
have been wonderfully precocious. Bryant can be pa- 
ralleled only by Coleridge. Thanatopsis was written 
at seventeen ; we recollect no poem of equal excellence 
produced so early by any poet, save the author of the 
Ancient Mariner. Yet Bryant has done nothing finer. 



3? LITERARY STUDIES. 

The only wonder is, that he alone has preserved his poeti- 
cal faculty, pure and fresh, still. Dana, his contemporary, 
has long been silent ; so, too, we may say, of Halleck and 
their compeers, Pierpoint, Sprague, and Percival. Some 
of our most promising bards died young — Drake and East- 
burn, and Sands and Brainard. The true successors, in 
some cases tlieir equals, or their superiors, are still young — 
Holmes, Will is, Longfellow, Mathews, and Lowell. Our best 
fiction was written by young men, Cooper and Brown, who 
produced " Wieland " at twenty-seven. Irving and Paul- 
ding have long since concluded their career as masterly 
comic satirists. Webster's speeches are not equal to his 
first orations. Wirt neglected literature as soon as he 
began to rise in his profession. But, of former cases in 
point, we suspect it is not generally known that our great 
men, of the Revolutionary age, were uncommonly prema- 
ture. Fisher Ames made a great speech at the age of 
twenty-three. Hamilton, at sixteen, wrote essays ascribed 
to Jay. Jay, at twenty, wrote the address to the people of 
Great Britain, just previous to the Revolution. Washing- 
ton, at twenty-three, was commander of the Virginia 
forces. Patrick Plenry and Jefferson were both of them 
greatly distinguished before thirty. At present, our lead- 
ing periodical writers, active politicians, clergymen, and 
men of letters generally, are, in nine cases out of ten, as 
might readily be shown, if it were proper to mention 
names, men under thirty years of age. It is, therefore, 
dangerous to advise a young man, or any man of ability, 
to refrain from composition, or any walk of active life, un- 
less the critic be well assured that he is of at least equal 
rank in respect to abilities and acquisitions, that no ten- 
dency of jealousy or feeling of envy can be possibly 



EARLY MATURITY OF GENIUS. S3 

ascribed to him, and that he possess an assemblage of 
qualities, mental and moral, that rarely falls to the lot of a 
single individual. Let it be remembered, too, that to be 
worthily received, and have its due weight, advice must 
be sought ; else it will be justly regarded rather in the 
light of an impertinent intrusion and voluntary censure. 

VOL. II. 3 



NOTORIETY 



A WRITER who could unite the philosophy of Bacon and 
the satire of Churchill, would be the author to undertake 
an essay on Notoriety. In the absence of any such extraor- 
dinary combination of talent, we venture to address our- 
selves to the subject ; to revive certain moral sentiments 
of equal worth and antiquity, an abundant apology for 
which, if any were necessary, would be found in the very 
fact of the great excellence of the sentiments themselves. 

Ancient fame has given place to modern notoriety. 
Solid repute is, nowadays, lost in fashionable applause, 
and the hero and bard, whose praise has furnished the 
theme of centuries, is cast into the shade by the idol of the 
hour. Of the different varieties of notoriety attainable by 
the arts of intrigue, the quackeries of impudence, or the 
settled fraud of a lifetime, we shall, after running over the 
titles of a few, confine ourselves at present, chiefly to noto- 
riety in literature, to the means of making a reputation by 
cant, imposture, and the influence of fashion. 

Notoriety is spurious fame ; a desire of obtaining it, false 
ambition. One intoxicated with the love of public fame 
(in the lower view of fame), had rather be ill-known than 
unknown. At any sacrifice, he would make a name. He 



NOTORIETY. 



3& 



would be talked of, if not cared for ; had rather be in 
men's mouths than in their hearts. He would be well 
spoken of rather than trivially thought of. It is not that 
he would be always praised — nay, sometimes he would 
prefer abuse, as an object of attack, and to give him an 
opportunity of replying to it. It is the weak man's dis- 
eased ambition ; the fool's fame ; the knave's bane ; the 
courtier's life ; the fopiing's breath ; the wise man's de- 
testation ; the honest man's disgust. 

Notoriety is attached to every calling and profession, art, 
science, trade or mystery. There is nothing in life which 
it may not affect ; no face it cannot assume. 

It haunts the pulpit, the university, the bar, the surgeon's 
hall ; it is found in political assemblies and literary meet- 
ings ; it rules supreme in the drawing-room, the theatre, 
the street, the watering-place, the tavern. 

What ways and means are employed to accomplish the 
great end ; what struggles and anxieties to appear what 
one is not ; what endeavors to hide these very attempts ! 
A private scandal, or a newspaper paragraph ; an abusive 
letter written by the party in question to himself; a self- 
inflicted libel ; a domestic quarrel ; a course of libertinism 
made public ; these are a few of the thousand baits to 
catch the public ear. A public official relieves a poor 
woman, the act is at once translated into the newspapers ; 
a wealthy citizen has fallen ill, it is immediately chroni 
cled ; a valuable shawl is worn by the wife of a celebrated 
statesman, it is universally made known. It is the whole 
business of the entire lives of most of the butterflies of 
fashion, to plot how they shall make themselves conspicu- 
ous from day to day. Absurdities in dress or equipage, 



36 LITERARY STUDIES. 

are getting to be stale devices ; what we shall have next, 
we are wanting in imagination to conceive. 

How to make a reputation in letters, is a nice problem 
for him to solve who has neither learning, genius, talents, 
nor enthusiasm. It is generally persons devoid of these 
fundamental requisites, that most affect the fame of author 
and scholar ; though it must be confessed, their purposes 
are ulterior, and do not rest in the bare enjoyment of a 
name. They catch at the chance of reputation for the 
sake of an introduction into what is called (one would 
think from irony) good society, or for, the mere gratifica- 
tion of seeing their names in print. 

Cant in literature is, next to cant in religion, the most 
despicable thing in the world ; the cant of the pretenders 
to literature is always so thorough-going as quite to ob- 
scure a really worthy but modest scholar. The quack 
will carry off by far the plurality of votes by the mere 
force of external display. 

Fashion is never more absurd than in her patronage of 
letters. She inevitably mistakes pretence for perform- 
ance, and fails to distinguish between merit and presump- 
tion. A fashionable author is, generally, a writer whose 
books are read only by people of fashion, and that only 
for a season or two. The fashionable author is made 
such, more by his manner and address than by any quali- 
ty in his writings worthy of notice. He dresses well, 
therefore takes rank as an elegant poet : he can carve 
neatly, hence is granted station as a critic or philosopher. 
The true poet, the genuine philosopher, is never fashiona- 
ble — except as an incident to his reputation — it being a 
peculiar quality of the servile crowd to join in wherever 
they hear a shout. The great author writes for the 



NOTORIETY. 



37 



whole world ; the writer of fashion for a very circumscrib- 
ed sphere or clique of readers. What is in cant phrase 
styled the " great world" of fashion, is, in fact, the most 
insignificant field of authorship. Fashionable people take 
more pleasure in creating reputation out of nothing, than 
in worshipping established idols, inasmuch as it gratifies 
their self-love. Of an inferior scribbler they make a 
genius for a season, and then cast him off*, as they do their 
tailor or their hounds — whence the poor victim readily 
concludes, or should, that notoriety, like all matters of 
fashion, is merely a reigning folly, a current prejudice. 

Somewhat connected with the subject of fashionable 
reputation, is the question of the public taste, more influ- 
enced by mere notoriety, than, perhaps, most readers im- 
agine. 

As a general rule, the public taste is vicious to a great 
degree. This is abundantly proved by the innumerable 
instances of ephemeral popularity, and consequent neglect 
of many, perhaps of most writers. Their works happen to 
hit a particular taste, or favor a prevailing fashion ; they 
chime in with the prejudices, and foster the passions of the 
day, and are rewarded by a short-lived reputation. In 
judging of poetry, in particular, one can hardly be too 
fastidious, who recollects that at one time Jonson lorded it 
over Shakspeare : at another, Cato was esteemed the first 
of English tragedies : and still later, Darwin and Hayley 
were thought great poets. How many schools are extinct, 
how many great men have proved in the eyes of posterity 
(that severe judge), very small persons indeed! How 
many philosophical systems have been consigned to oblivi- 
on, with their inventors and promulgators ! What shoals of 
tragedies, epics, novels of every description, lives, travels, 



38 LITEEARY STUDIES. 

sermons, speeches, and periodicals, choke up the river of 
Lethe — across tliat stream wlio can venture unless first 
drugged to sleep by the pages of a writer 

Sleepless himself, to give liis readers sleep ? 

Taste is a natural sensibility to excellence, heightened 
by the nicest observation, and perfected by close study. 
If we allow this, how dare the great multitude of readers 
to set up their critical claims ? Every man now is a 
reader, and a critic of course. What a monstrous absurd- 
ity is this ! In other things we see its ridiculousness, but 
we seem blind here. 

The purest poetry and the noblest philosophy are so 
nnich above the comprehension of vulgar minds, that they 
never can be popular — so with the most delicate wit and 
humor, and tlie finest works of fancy. Pure language 
and an elegant simplicity, are also out of the reach of 
common intellects. 

Sure fame is a very different thing from notoriety. 
Cowley has placed the idea of fiime in the proper light. 
He says, " I love and commend a true good fame because 
it is the shadoio of virtue : not that it doth any good to the 
body which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious sha- 
dow, and, like that of St. Peter, cures tlie diseases of 
others."* The true fame is, " that which follows, not 
that whicli is run after ;" the companion of goodness, not 
the lacquey of fashion. 

We have treated notoriety as a fraud of men ; it is 
sometimes the dream of youtli — an honest dream. When 
we are young, we are goaded by a false impulse, and would 

* Essay on Obscurity. 



NOTORIETY. 39 

be famous without any regard to the conditions of obtain, 
ing fame ; but when years have brought a certain equable 
gravity of temper, and calmness of judgment, we begin to 
see things in their true colors, and to value a life of virtue 
above a life of honors. We at last discover the pitiful 
shifts of those who would obtain notoriety, and the incredi- 
ble meannesses to wliich they subject themselves, by their 
ignorant zeal in the pursuit of worldly glory. Titles, 
wealth, applause, what chimeras ye are ! what bubbles ye 
make of us your greedy followers ! The highest powers 
of intellect, the most brilliant gems of poesy, are incom- 
parably inferior to the possession of a peaceful conscience, 
and a heart filled with none but good intentions. 

The fame of the popular poet, or the great general, has 
an almost overpowering charm for the young man ; but a 
later age, which cools his blood, clears his mind also, and 
he only wonders how he ever happened to entertain such 
images of greatness, as the gods of his idolatry. The 
flashes of the skilful rhetorician captivate the youthful stu- 
dent ; but the powers of the philosophic reasoner attract 
his maturer judgment. Light, airy poetry, is fit food for 
the raw critic ; but experience and reflection give the palm 
to a deeper and more majestic vein. Amusement gains us 
then, but instruction holds us now. Then, we imagine we 
have learnt all that is to be known ; now, we feel our real 
ignorance of the highest mysteries, and would die learning. 
Thus we see the love of applause (in its place, and in its 
integrity, a noble incentive to generous action) is still an 
insufficient motive. Milton, in that well known passage, 
which summons all the powers of the soul as with the sound 
of a trumpet, has written nobly of fame — as 



40 LITERARY STUDIES. 

The spur which the clear spirit doth raise. 

Though he feels obliged to add 

(That last infirmity of noble minds), 
To scorn delights and live laborious days. 

Yet as fame is not altogether of a disinterested nature 
(though the interestedness is of the highest character), it 
cannot furnish the only sure foundation for a life of virtue. 
The sense of duty is our only resource ; and on that, as on 
an eternal and immutable foundation, we may erect a su- 
perstructure as high as our genius may serve to raise it, 
sacred to both genius and virtue. 



VI . 



LETTERS 



Next to the essay, the letter is the most agreeable form of 
the minor literature. It is the most familiar species 
of writing, and approaches the nearest to ordinary conver- 
sation. Letters are the opuscula of great authors, but they 
form the opera of lesser writers. We weekly critics and 
magaziners may be proud of a volume of clever epistles, 
fearful of essaying a higher flight. Authors of the first 
class, and with the highest pretensions, affect to look down 
upon letters as the mere entertainment of a scholar ; and 
hence, from want of sympathy, no less than from want of 
nicety of apprehension and subtle delicacy of taste, have 
almost uniformly failed in this department of composition. 
A professed orator, a great divine, poet or philosopher, 
cannot easily descend from the heights of speculation and 
eloquence and imagination, to the plain ground of common- 
place reality. Raillery is the most delightful talent in 
epistolary composition (a delicate talent) ; and next to that, 
refined sentiment. These are minute excellences, how- 
ever, agreeable in the great character, and the incidental 
ornaments of a strong intellect. Women uniformly write 
the best letters, both of the narrative kind and lively de- 
scription. Lady Montague and Madame D'Arblay are yet 

3* 



42 LITERARY STUDIES. 

unsurpassed. The female intellect is allowed to possess a 
finer tact and a minuter (instinctive) observation of things 
and characters, than the manly understanding. It is better 
pleased with the details of a subject, and paints the man- 
ners with a lighter hand. Boarding-school girls, and 
young ladies, who have just " come out," are readier with 
their pens in recounting family history, and current fash- 
ionable news ; in giving a relation of the incidents at a 
ball or dinner-party, at sketching portraits of the beaux 
and their admirers ; and, in a word, at all the arts of gos- 
siping and scandal, than boys or young men, much older. 
Richardson has shown this very conclusively in his novels. 
His letters are the very counterparts of those of young 
ladies in the same situation, and such as they would natu- 
rally write. 

Letters are valuable for many reasons. As a test of 
character, and affording an unconscious autobiography — 
as materials for literary and political history — as pictures 
of the times — as the repositories of individual opinions and 
peculiar sentiments. As a test of character, letters are 
worth much more than the more ordinary (supposed) keys 
to that sort of knowledge. A man's autograph may be 
very far from characteristic. I know a generous man, 
who writes a mean, cramped scrawl, and an undecided 
one, whose chirography is firm and regular. Physiognomy 
may belie the brightness of the head and the goodness of 
the heart. Phrenology may regard as an indifferent speci- 
men the casket that contains a golden brain. But a num- 
ber of confidential letters addressed to familiar friends, and 
written in all the warmth of confidence, afford the fairest 
means of getting at the real character of the writer. Yet 
insincerity may occur here. Letters are often written for 



LETTERS. 43 

the public eye, though on the most confidential subjects. 
Pope and Walpole wrote for posterity. They wrote at, 
rather than to, their correspondents. So, also, of the French 
wits. We confine ourselves entirely to English authors, 
however, in the present paper. Some authors have told 
their history in letters, as Howell, Gray, Cowper, Burns, 
and Lamb, — dwelling on petty occurrences and compara- 
tively slight traits, with an unction and gusto that would 
not be allowed in a formal biography. Of the historical 
value of letters, no complete student can doubt, and none 
but he can appreciate it adequately. 

English literature is rich in letters from Howell to 
Lamb. Intermediately, we have Pope and his friends, 
Cowper, Burns, Gray, Walpole, Lady Montague ; a suffi- 
cient variety, surely, both of talent and character. We 
had meant to draw up a classification of, and criticism 
upon, the difierent sorts of letters, but find the whole matter 
so handsomely handled in the very first letter of Howell, 
that we insert it instead : " It was a quaint difference the 
ancients did put betwixt a letter and an oration ; that the 
one should be attired like a woman, the other like a man. 
The latter of the two is allowed large siderobes, as long 
periods, parentheses, similes, examples, and other parts of 
rhetorical flourishes : but a letter or epistle should be 
short-coated and closely couched ; a hungerskin becomes 
a letter more handsomely than a gown. Indeed we should 
write as we speak, and that is a true and familiar letter 
which expresseth one's mind, as if he were discoursing 
with the party to whom he writes in succinct and short 
terms. The tongue and the pen are both of them inter, 
preters of the mind ; but I hold the pen to be the more 
faithful of the two. The tongue in udo ijosita, being seated 



44 LITERARY STUDIES. 

in a most slippery place, may fail and falter in her sudden 
extemporal expressions, but the pen, having a greater ad- 
vantage of premeditation, is not so subject to error, and 
leaves tilings behind it upon firm and authentic record. 
Now letters (here conies the division), though they be 
capable of any subject, yet commonly they are either 
narratory, objurgatory, consolatory, monitory, or congratu- 
latory. Tiio first consists of relations, the second of 
reprehensions, tlie third of comfort, the two last of counsel 
and joy." Then follows some very just and severe criti- 
cism : 

" There are some who, in lieu of letters, write homi- 
lies ; they preach when they should epistolize (and it is 
easier to do the former than the latter) ; there are others 
that turn tliem to tedious tractates." Ilowoll, himself, the 
earliest of our letter writers, is a capital follow in his way ; 
but he has not mentioned all tlie varieties of letters. 
There are the precise letters of business, and the ardent 
love letters; to a third and disinterested person, both of 
these are not only indifferent, but even tiresome. The 
purely literary letter is not mentioned, i. e., that in which 
topics of literature and the characters of authors are dis- 
cussed ; mere letters of compliment, or formal civility, are 
not recognized, nor lively gay epistles, that turn upon 
nothing. 

Some persons keep no letters by them. Ilazlitt destroyed 
all he received : a very poor compliment, we tliink, to a 
clever correspondent, to say nothing of the letters of a 
valued friend. Others hoard up every scrap of a note ; 
this is as wrong in a diflerent way. Many indifferent 
communications are received, but the choice correspond- 



LETTERS. 45 

ence is of another character. Shcnstone speaks some- 
where of the rnelanclioly pleasure he took of a rainy day 
wlien his spirits were low, in reading over the old letters of 
a dear friend. 

This retrospective pleasure is truly a melancholy one. 
Turning over the precious file, we encounter the affec- 
tionate protestations of one who has cruelly deceived us, 
or the generous praises of a now hitter enemy. We read 
the prophecies of those who early loved and appreciated 
us, and wlio can now confirm their past predictions. Time 
returns anew ; tlie present is merged in tiie past, and 
scenes long gone hy, revive to memory's view ! Ah ! 
could we but recall those feelings to whicli we received 
such a sympathetic response, tliose " hopes and fears, an 
undistinguishahlc throng ;" could but the veil of years be 
removed, and youth and hope and innocence be revealed, 
then indeed might an Arcadian age commence, and the 
whole world look green and happy. It is well and profita- 
ble to the observer of human nature, and the self-student, 
to reperuse his collection of letters, and if he can procure 
them, to study his own. Viewed in connection with j)aRS- 
ing events, they form an unbroken narrative, and manifest 
the progress of tastes and sympathies, improvement in 
virtue, and accessions of knowledge. The didactic letters, 
the letters of business, of contention, of mere scandal, may 
be safely burned ; but the memorials of affection, the 
evidences of friendship, are not to be lightly treated, but, 
dear as the apple of the eye, to bo held among the richest 
treasures of the author, the thinker, and the man. 



VII. 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 



Letters never ollered more abundant nor so enticing ma- 
terials, for literary and personal history, as in the case of 
Pope and his friends. The wonder only is, that Macaulay 
or lluzlitt never made the corrosi)ondence, or the corre- 
spondents of Pope, the subject of an article or a lecture. 
For either purpose, these volumes are admirably fitted ; 
but, as the allotted space a notice of the sort may occupy 
here is restricted, we can pretend to little more than a 
sketch. Pope, his letters, and his friends ; each text is 
worthy of a full illustration, but can be only briefly han- 
dled. 

Tile character and habits of mind of the poet, par excel- 
lence, "of Anna's reign," are vividly depicted in his cor- 
respondence. Writing to his nearest friends, and on the 
most solemn themes. Pope never forgot his authorship. 
His fame was too much in his eye, and the opinion of the 
public in his mind. His characteristic refinement, deli- 
cacy of judgment, his nicety of expression and neat turns 
of stylo, appear on every page. The virtues of the man, 
too, admirable and as real as the merits of the wit, satirist, 
and moral-painter, in spite of his affection and passion for 
intrigue and stratagem, are equally evident. His affec- 
tions and regard for his parents j his devotion to his 



rOPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 47 

friends ; his sincere humanity ; his generous sensibility. 
The personal character of Pope, owing to his brilliant 
literary success, and to his success chiefly in satire, is 
not so well or so favorably known as it should be. He 
is thought by many to have been what he was humor- 
ously styled, and as falsely as humorously, " the little 
wasp of Twickenham." So far from indulging mean 
spite and malice, the heart of Pope was of the noblest 
texture, and its impulses governed by the most exalted 
sentiments. If ever there was a true-hearted and mag- 
nanimous nature, in default of his crooked ways and un- 
wise circumlocutions, it was Pope's. To Pope was ad- 
dressed not only the hollow, courtly speeches of the titled 
and great, but the sincerest praises of England's finest 
wits and most delicate geniuses were accorded to Pope, 
and Pope was loved and honored, as well as admired and 
praised. He secured the personal afiection of men, not 
only of talents equally fine and attic with his own, but in 
some walks superior, and whose own natures and tempers 
were above all praise. Only survey the list of Pope's 
intimate associates : Addison, Swift, Gay, Berkeley, Boling- 
broke, Steele, Arbuthnot, Parnell, Wycherly, Congreve, 
Garth, Jervas, Fenton, Hugh Bethel, Ralph Allen, Rowc, 
and Sir William Trumbull, Secretary Craggs, Earls Hali- 
fax and Burlington, Bishop Atterbury, the Blounts, the 
Digbys, Cromwell, and the fine ladies of the day. It may 
bo safely hazarded as a general remark, that not a single 
distinguished man of letters or public character in the 
kingdom was unknown to Pope. He was regarded, and 
justly, as the Horace and Voiture of England united, and 
for exact justness of thought and propriety of language, for 
wit (the like of which we have not since seen), for comic 



48 LITERARY STUDIES. 

fancy, and for exquisite compliment, he was unrivalled — 
but chiefly as a moral satirist and judge, equally of books 
and artificial life, was he considered admirable, and in 
these walks he is decidedly a master. 

Pope was as precocious in his prose compositions as in 
his poetical attempts. His early correspondence was al- 
most all of it written before the age of twenty. At sixteen, 
he commenced his correspondence with Wycherly, then 
near seventy, and, it must be confessed. Pope has the best 
of the bargain. Shortly after, he wrote to Walsh and 
Henry Cromwell, his early friends and flatterers. With 
Wycherly, Pope maintained a perfect war of compliments, 
and yet, after all, they quarrelled from Pope's plain speak- 
ing, when he was forced to it. Walsh, whom Dryden 
called the best critic in England, early favored Pope, and 
augured the most brilliant success for him. Pope has not 
forgotten to number him among the catalogue of his early 
associates. We cannot resist quoting the fine lines, often 
as they are referred to : — 

" But why then publish ? Granville, the polite, 
And knowing Walsh would tell me I could write; 
Well-natured Garth, inflamed with early praise. 
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays ; 
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read. 
E'en mitred Rochester would nod the head, 
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before), 
With open arms receiv'd one Poet more. 
Happy my studies, when by these approved ! 
Happier their author when by these beloved ! 
From these the world will judge of men and books, 
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks." 

What might not the richest fool give for an epithet of 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 



49 



praise from such a pen : what higher honor for the author, 
but to see his name on the same page with that of Pope, 
though his be at the bottom and the Horace of England 
very near the top ? 

Henry Cromwell affected to be a critic (we should judge 
he was a man-of-the-world sort of scholar from his letters), 
and Pope discusses with him questions of taste and criti- 
cism, the Latin poets, versification, etc. He devotes a 
letter to Crashaw, in this part of his correspondence, which 
abundantly proves how little Pope really comprehended the 
genius of that noble poet. 

Pope early courted the great, much as he afterwards 
affected to despise them, and we find him writing to Sir 
William Trumbull, and Craggs, Secretary of State, as well 
as to several court ladies, the style of whom he has ad- 
mirably parodied in his letter in the style of a lady of qua- 
lity. Our author's correspondence with ladies, when he 
was young, he afterwards used to contemn as puerile 
efforts, and yet, trifling as they are, many a modern gallant 
of middle age might be happy to hit the frivolous style so 
well, which was current at that time. The prose letters 
of Pope to women certainly convey a very mean opinion 
of their understanding, though couched in elegant phrase, 
and hidden under the folds of his " polite, insinuating 
style." But some of the poetic epistles to ladies are be- 
yond all praise, as that master-piece of refinement and 
delicacy, the epistle to Miss Blount, with a copy of Voi- 
ture's epistles. Each couplet contains the rarest essence 
of grace and wit, and elegant sentiment, at times rising 
into brilliant rhetoric, and the whole poem is compacted 
and moulded with all the art, and in the most ingenious 
form of the master of poetic form, and all the technicalities 



50 LITERARY STUDIES. 

of his vocation. There were among the throng of cour- 
tiers, however, patrons worthy of the name, and nobles 
deserving the title. Oxford and Halifax, Craggs and At- 
terbury, sank the minister in the friend, in their intercourse 
with Pope, and delighted to relieve themselves from the 
cares of state in a genial intimacy with the poet at his 
rural villa. But the true friends of Pope, as indeed the 
truest friends of every author, were his fellow-scholars and 
brother authors. Let envy and malevolence declaim as 
they may, true men of sense and genius, the world over, 
recognize a brother in each other, and band together, like 
good men and wise, for the preservation of social harmony 
and intellectual freedom. We care little for the lords and 
ladies of Pope's acquaintance, but who does not delight in 
his letters to Gay, and Jervas, and Fenton, and (to leave 
the society of authors, but not of good men) to those noble 
specimens of human nature, Hugh Bethel and Ralph 
Allen ? Pope mistook his own nature, when he turned 
courtier. He had too much heart for the character. How 
different are his cold, cautious compliments to the great, 
whom he loved not, from the delicious flatteries, the fruit 
of rich affections and high appreciation, he was accustomed 
to lavish on his nearest friends ! To dwell but lightly on 
his faults, there was a tinge of insincerity in Pope ; we 
trust, however, rather a vacillation of opinion than any 
settled duplicity of intention. We think we see signs of 
this in his correspondence with Addison, who, it must be 
confessed, was himself too suspicious, and in one instance 
treated Pope in an unwarrantably deceitful manner. Pope 
appears to have had less connection with Steele, a man of 
much greater frankness and candor than his associate. 
Jervas, the Painter, was a life-long friend of Pope, who 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 51 

Studied the art of portraiture under him, but never carried 
it to any perfection. His poetical portraits were certainly- 
fine enough for any reasonable ambition. In his epistle to 
Jervas, a meet companion for his fine letter to Miss Blount, 
Pope exclaims : • 

" Alas ! how little from the grave we claim ! 
Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name." 

Posterity has preserved the names embalmed in Pope's 
immortal strain, but has thrown by, in her lumber-room of 
obscurity, the portraits of Jervas. Swift and Gay, Boling- 
broke and Peterborough, are the chief names that remain 
among the correspondents of Pope. With these most 
opposite characters, the one pair composed of a man, 
harsh, austere, and sour, yet manly, friendly and firm ; 
the other, in wit, a man, simplicity, a child ; wise and inno- 
cent, penetrating, yet volatile, a poet, philosopher, wit, 
child, courtier, and dupe : the other couple, a fashionable 
sceptic and a military wit, but wise and keen observers, 
accomplished gentlemen, men of wit, men of the world, 
men of action. Pope lived not only on terms of perfect 
amity, but in the unreservedness of brotherhood ; nay more, 
for brothers are not always the nearest friends. The 
Vicar of Laracor, the keenest of satirists, the manliest of 
misanthropes, appears in his letters to Pope a very difTerent 
creature from the tyrant over the lives and fates of Stella 
and Vanessa. He writes even with an honest sensibility, 
without a particle of mawkishness. To Gay he writes like 
a loving, but prudent father, beseeching that imprudent 
man of genius to lay aside his hundred and one schemes, 
and nurse his little fortune. Gay died in middle age, and 
therefore never knew what it was to want the comforts of life 



52 LiTERAiay studies. 

in an old age of poverty and friendlessness. Arbuthnot 
was the idol of Swift. He thus writes of him, with mingled 
admiration and humor : " Oh, if the world had but a dozen 
Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my travels ! But, however, 
he is not without a fault. There is a passage in Bede, 
highly commending the piety and learning of the Irish in 
that age, where, after abundance of praises, he overthrows 
them all by lamenting that, alas, they kept Easter at the 
wrong time of the year. So our doctor has every quality 
and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful ; but, 
alas, he has a sort of slouch in his walk ! I pray God 
protect him, for he is an excellent Christian, though not a 
Catholic." 

Lamb valued Pope most for his refined compliments. 
His prose flattery is not so fine as his poetic eulogy ; but 
it is very elegant. In a letter to Cromwell, he says : " You 
are so good a critic, that it is the greatest happiness of the 
modern poets that you do not hear their works" (alluding 
to his deafness). To Jervas he concludes a letter thus : 
" Come thou, and having peopled Ireland with a world of 
beautiful shadows, come to us and see with that eye, which, 
like the eye of the world, creates beauties by looking on 
them." To the same painter he writes: '-I hope the 
spring will restore you to us, and with you, all the beauties 
and colors of nature." 

Pope's affectionate disposition shines through all his 
works, but we do not recollect a more striking instance 
than the following, in a letter to a correspondent whose 
name is withheld. " I cannot express how I long to renew 
our old intercourse and conversation ; our morning con- 
ferences in bed in the same room, our evening walks in the 
Park, our amusing voyages on the water, our philosophical 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 53 

suppers, our lectures, our dissertations, our gravities, our 
reveries, our fooleries, our what not ! 

" This awakens the memory of some who made a part 
in all these. Poor Parnell, Garth, Rowe ! You justly re- 
prove me for not speaking of the death of the last ; Par- 
nell was too much in my mind, to whose memory I am 
erecting the best monument I can. What he gave me to 
publish was but a small part of what he left behind him ; 
but it was the best, and I will not make it worse by enlarg- 
ing it ; I would fain know if he be buried at Chester or 
Dublin ; and what care has been or is to be taken for his 
monument, etc. Yet I have not neglected my devoirs to 
Mr. Rowe : I am writing this very day his epitaph for 
Westminster Abbey. After these, the best-natured of men, 
Sir Samuel Garth, has left me in the truest concern for his 
loss. His death was very heroical, and yet unaffected 
enough to have made a saint or a philosopher famous. 
But ill tongues and worse hearts have branded even his 
last moments as wrongfully as they did his life, with irre- 
ligion. You must have heard many tales on this subject ; 
but if ever there was a good Christian without knowing 
himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth." Thus nobly did Pope 
vindicate his friends, absent or dead. Unlike our modern 
Damons, he did not from a warm friend become a bitter 
enemy, but preserved through life his ancient regard with 
all the steadfastness of a true man. A regulating Provi- 
dence will preserve the fame of Pope fair and unsullied by 
the breath of malice or the tongue of slander ; the just re- 
compense of a pure heart and a trusting spirit. 

Contemporary with Pope, " the cynosure of neighboring 
eyes," the centre of an admiring circle, "the glass of 
fashion and the mould of form," a wit, an authoress and a 



54 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



fine woman, lived the celebrated Miss Pierrepont, more 
generally known under the name and title of Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague, one of the idols of Pope's idolatry, and 
indisputably the cleverest woman of her age. The reign 
of Queen Anne, and the period circling about that epoch, 
of about thirty-eight years, from the commencement of the 
reign of King William III. to the end of the reign of 
George I., was, we are inclined to suspect, the transition 
period (to employ a fashionable phrase) in the estimation 
of female character. Before that day women had not at- 
tained their just position in the social state, and since that 
time they have met with a truer regard and a more intelli- 
gent homage than even in the days of knighthood and 
chivalry, when a lady meant rather a fanciful abstrac- 
tion of virtue and beauty, made only for worship and ex- 
travagant adulation (insincere and therefore heartless, 
and consequently insulting), than " a perfect • woman 
nobly planned," " a phantom of delight," a genial, loving, 
household companion and help-mate, in trial and adversity. 
Pope himself and most of his brother wits appear to have 
held the female mind and the female heart in rather a low 
estimation, but the characters of women were improving in 
many particulars. They lost many petty foibles as they 
shifted the various fashions in dress and manners. The 
benevolent ridicule of Addison was pointed not only at their 
patches and their hair-dresses, and rouging, but also at 
their absurd political partizanship, at their preference of 
*' pretty fellows " to men of sense, at their vacant minds, 
simpering manners, ill-regulated affections. Swift's pun- 
gent satires on fashionable conversation did much ; Pope's 
characters of women effected a greater reform, as if to 
falsify the satire ; but to Addison, and perhaps still more 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 55 

to the gallant Steele, were the ladies mainly indebted. No 
writers equalled this last pair in administering judicious 
counsel in a cheerful, gay, graceful manner, by which 
they charmed those who charmed all the world besides. 
Public opinion and a better system of education tended 
greatly to setting the just rights of woman in a proper point 
of view. The goddess, from a toy and a plaything, the 
alluring charmer of an idle hour, became a pleasing, mo- 
dest, domestic, happy woman, enlightened, ennobled, and 
refined. Such (to take the most favorable instances) we 
now find her. From a general digression on the state of 
female society in the reign of Queen Anne to the brilliant 
representative of the intellectual woman of that society, 
the transition is natural. Lady Montague is not, perhaps, 
after all, the very best specimen, for she was more the 
woman of clear, acute intellect, and of fashion, than the 
quiet wife of pure sentiment and propriety of behavior. 
She was rather the Aspasia (without her vices, though with 
her attractions) than the Cornelia of English women — the 
fine lady, rather than the polished gentlewoman — the am- 
bitious wit, rather than the natural talker. But taking her 
as she was, she must have been as fascinating in her con- 
versation as agreeable in her letters, and altogether a de- 
lightful creature, one disgusting foible, or rather positive 
defect excepted, which the fastidious reader may compre- 
hend by a reference to the Walpoliana. Lady Montague 
was almost the first, in point of date, among English female 
writers, although not recognized as such in her life-time, 
none of her compositions having been published until after 
her decease. Lady Russell, Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Centli- 
vre, Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and a few obscure writers, had 
preceded her, but none in her own department had ap- 



56 LITERARY STUDIES. 

proached her. She is the English Sevigne, unequalled in 
a gay, sprightly vein, and in easy natural narrative and 
description. The bulk of her correspondence, letters from 
Turkey, presents entertaining views of that country, as a 
book of travels. She had the most favorable opportunities 
of obtaining information (her husband being the English 
ambassador at the Sublime Porte), and made diligent use 
of them. From that country also she derived the practice 
of inoculating children for the small-pox, by which hu- 
mane intervention she has entitled herself to the praise of 
patriotic humanity. With all her wit, and she had a large 
share ; in the very face of her beauty, which was extreme ; 
excluding her authorship ; applauding her charitable exer- 
tions ; we are repelled by a strong tinge of the masculine 
in her character. A vigorous mind left its imprint upon 
her disposition and manners. The strong understanding 
admitted coarseness of allusion and freedom of style. Her 
descriptions are luxuriant to voluptuousness ; the atmo- 
sphere of the harem is painted couleur de rose. Vividness 
of fancy is perhaps inconsistent with delicacy of taste, and 
strong conceptions with unimpassioned coldness of painting. 
The woman loses what the wit gains, and we feel that we 
had rather admire the beauty and applaud the wit, than 
take the woman to our heart for the journey of life. A 
brilliant evening in a splendid crowd can never make 
amends for mornings of lassitude and ennui, and years of 
dull, cheerless, uncompanionable repinings and moodiness. 
Age steals the roses from the cheek of beauty, and bereaves 
the woman of the world of all her charms. Wit is clouded 
and grows blunt in the passage of years, while the heart of 
the worldling is approaching more and more closely to a 
state of moral ossification, by which the soul in time be- 



POPE AND HIS FRIENDS. 57 

comes wholly hardened, and the human creature is con- 
verted into a petrifaction. We are far from applying the 
whole of this homily to Lady Mary ; but, we believe, we 
repeat a standard criticism in objecting to a portion of her 
writings, and to some of her habits and constitutional fea- 
tures. 

VOL. II. 4 



VIIl. 



GRAY AND COWPER 



The two best male writers of letters, between Pope and 
Lamb, were both poets like them, which was almost the 
sole point of resemblance the four possessed in common. 
They all had wit, and something of humor, but each dif- 
fered from his brother bard. Pope's wit was courtly and 
refined ; Gray's, like his taste, fastidious ; Cowper's mea- 
sured and moral, like himself in public, timid and re- 
strained ; and Lamb's full of the whimsical crotchets 
which formed a portion of his individuality and temper. 

Johnson has underrated Gray's Pindaric Poems as un- 
justly as Hazlitt has overrated his letters. There- are 
noble and grand thoughts filled out, and expressed in lan- 
guage ardent and picturesque, in the poems of Gray, and 
there is a majestic sweep in the pinions of his muse, which 
he has finely described in his own line of the eagle, " Sail- 
ing wide in supreme dominion, through the azure depths of 
air." He is often cold, but when he warms, he glows. 
His fire is the genuine afflatus, and no pasteboard imita- 
tion or balloon inflation. At times lie comes nearer to 
Milton than any poet since the author of Paradise Lost. 
But in his letters, elegantly as they are written (the Eng- 
lish is wonderfully simple for a stickler for the classics), 



GRAY AND COWPER. 59 

he appears by no means in his fairest guise. His criti- 
cisms in many cases are inadequate and criminally care- 
less. He speaks slightingly of Thomson's charming po- 
ems, just then out. He relishes Gresset, however, and 
speaks with respect of Southern. Shaftesbury he anato- 
mises keenly, but with justice. The Greeks and Romans 
always fare well at his hands, but his contemporaries he 
has little sympathy for. His humor (his nearest friends 
thought there lay his forte) would be more readily appre- 
ciated if it were less elaborate — a fine humorist and good 
fellow was spoiled in the pedantic student. For, it must 
be confessed. Gray was scholastic to pedantry with his 
characteristic nicety and daintiness. We tire of i^ew 
things so soon as fastidiousness, for it is impossible to love 
those whom we cannot satisfy or please. Yet we sympa- 
thize with the independence of the man who refused to re- 
tain a friendship for Walpole after he discovered his hol- 
lowness and fickle nature ; and we cannot but reverence 
the moroseness and admire the secluded life of one who 
despised the purse-pride of the wealthy, and from the lofty 
elevation of his genius looked down upon the arrogance of 
the great and noble. Bating his fastidiousness and reserve 
Gray was " every inch a poet, and greater than a king," 
a true Saxon man. His spirit had all the vigor, something 
of the roughness, and an appearance (only an appearance) 
of the sterility of the hardy plants of the cold North • but 
like them it bore equally well the heats of July and the 
snows of December, and in itself containing a source of 
perennial fruitfulness, outbraved the mocks of jealousy and 
lived down the scorn of calumny. It still continues in all 
its original freshness. 

The style of Cowper's letters is less elaborately elegant. 



(iO LITERARY STUDIES. 

is simpler and more agreeable tlian Gray's. He has more 
of nature. Gray's genius was liigli, but also ambitious; 
it lacked naivete and unforced ease. His art too was 
rich and composite, but not so refined as to be concealed. 
Cowper's domestic habits, continual living with and among 
women (while Gray lived only by himself, or with a few 
friends), iiis moral bias, his physical indolence and timidity, 
iiis religious melancholy, gave a distinct coloring to all his 
productions. These appeared much more in his poetry 
than in his prose. In his letters he is cheerful, sometimes 
gay. His vein of humor is quite unconscious, and the 
more delightful for that reason. He had, when unbiased, 
a fund of most excellent sense, with a clear judgment. 
His natural feelings were pure as a child's. He seems to 
have been a man without guile : affectionate, confiding 
and cpnstant. Yet he had a keen eye for folly, and a tal- 
ent for moral satire next to Pope, and we are apt to think, 
sincerer. He occasionally sketches a character with bre- 
vity and point. He discovers no very rich stores of ac- 
quired learning, but much wise reflection. 

His quiet life was not without its experience and hours 
of contemplation. He loved nature, he loved innocent 
animals, he loved the society of virtuous women, and good 
men ; and he worshipped in truth and with awful grati- 
tude the Being he adored and loved. Cowper was a 
Christian poet, a rare title of honor. He might have filled 
a high political station and been soon forgotten. Who 
but a very few know anything of the great statesman. 
Lord Cowper ? Who is not acquainted witli the greater 
poet, William Cowper ? Yet we are far from styling 
Cowper a great poet : compared with Milton, and Shak- 
speare, and Wordsworth, he ranks in the second or third 



GUAY AND COWPER. 61 

class of poets. But he is first in that. He is the poet of 
domestic life ; a moral satirist with generous indignation, 
but without gall ; a Christian psalmist (no hymns are finer 
than some of his), and a judicious, pure-minded, sweet- 
tempered, warm-hearted friend, counsellor, and compa- 
nion. Cowper's English is select and idiomatic, ft is as 
racy as that of many writers more noticed for vigor, and 
yet it is quite free from the least taint of vulgarity. If he 
seldom soared very high, he never fell into coarseness ; 
and his style is as free from moral and literary corruption, 
as his wit is free from acerbity, and his sentiment from 
affectation. With Cowper, we shall conclude, since Lamb 
has been made the subject of so much delicate criticism 
and fine writing since his death, that we cannot aim at 
novelty, without disparaging better writers and better quali- 
fied judges, because personal friends, than any American 
writers can pretend to be. 



IX 



AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS. 



Among the various divisions and subdivisions into which 
the trade of authorship is divided we recognize two class- 
es ; authors by profession, and amateur writers : those 
who regard study and composition as the business of their 
lives, and those who look upon them merely as incidental 
occupations. Now we all know very well how absurd a 
thing it would be for a client to ask the services of an 
amateur lawyer, with an air of confidence in the request, 
and in the expectation of his faithful attention to business ; 
so, too, with regard to the advice of an amateur physician ; 
and, indeed, the analogy holds in every walk of life. Few 
do that well " for love " which can be better done for 
money. If it be true in the common concerns of life, that 
the laborer is worthy of his hire, it is much more to be 
so considered when we ascend in the scale of labor, and 
come finally to that which most tasks the intellect and 
requires the greatest number of choice thoughts. Purely 
imaginative employment, invention in fiction, the highest 
class (and indeed all but the most inferior departments of 
poetry, the musa pedestris), must aflTord more of delight 
self-centred, and in a good degree independent of pecu- 
niary reward or the glory of a noble fame. Yet even 



AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS. 63 

poets cannot live without bread and broadcloth ; and so far 
as their imperishable and spiritual commodities can be 
paid for, should be remunerated in a princely manner. 
But in speaking of authors and men of letters in general, 
we shall except the few grand poets from our remarks, and 
include rather the mass of good, than the minority of great, 
writers. We do not intend to comprehend in our list 
either the barely respectable scribes, who abound now-a- 
day as thickly as Dogberry's whortleberries ; although 
among amateur authors we must not forget that for one 
really clever man (^not to say man of genius) there are at 
the least estimate ninety and nine stupid fellows, who 
assume the cloak of gravity wherewithal to hide the 
defects of dullness. 

A merchant is respected for shrewdness in turning a 
penny, for the accumulation of a fortune, and yet we hear 
of the mercenary rewards of authorship, and the base 
equivalent for the productions of genius : as if the more a 
man gave the less he should ask ; build a palace at less 
cost than a cottage. At this rate a sign painter would be 
entitled to higher pay than Raphael himself; and we might 
take our strongest arguments that men of genius should 
be nobly rewarded for their magnificent conceptions and 
labors, from the single class of painters. The great old 
masters lived like princes, and were paid as the great law- 
yer and surgeon of our own time are paid. Yet they did 
not become lazy or careless ; nor did wealth stifle the fine 
images of their brains, or palsy the masterly skill of their 
hands. 

Thoughts form the merchandise of the writer, as stufl?s 
and wares of the trader. If the one can convert his stock 
into current coin as readily as the other, on the mere 



64 LITERARY STUDIES. 

ground of husbandry he deserves no little credit for his 
skill. Fame is a noble thing, it cannot be too highly eulo- 
gized ; but fame alone cannot supply the necessities of 
physical existence, however it may conduce to the gene- 
rous expansion of sentiment, the growth of the soul. 
Neither is the charm of letters as a pursuit, and as a labor 
that brings its own reward, all-sufficient to sustain the 
scholar. If his intellectual and sensitive nature are ex- 
cited and elevated by the trump of fame, or soothed into 
delight by study and meditation, yet he has another nature 
to take care of, to neglect which wilfully is to commit a 
scarcely justifiable suicide. 

An amateur in almost every walk is regarded as much 
inferior to a working member of the craft. A man rarely 
puts his heart or invests the whole stock of his faculties in 
a pursuit which he takes up casually to while away an 
hour or two of an idle day. Such writers do not seem 
properly ever to become amenable to criticism. You are 
never sure whether they are doing their best or not ; as a 
member of the fancy might say they do not appear to 
come up to the scratch. They fence with foils blunted at 
the end, and dread the naked weapon ; or they are like 
shots who practise with powder only. " These paper 
pellets of the brain" are too much for them. 

In our literary world in this country, there is no lack in 
point of numbers of amateur authors. They are generally 
either quite young men, sons of wealthy men, " who pen 
a stanza while they should engross;" or else men in the 
meridian of life, who affect the notoriety of fashionable 
authorship. They are young poets or middle-aged novel- 
ists; writers of essays in reviews, and of sketches for the 
magazines. Sometimes they translate tales or travels for 



AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS. 65 

the weekly extras. They deliver an occasional lecture, 
and contribute articles for the newspapers. Their names 
are often better known than their productions ; they live 
in cliques, herd in clubs and coteries, and puff each other 
inordinately. Their reputation is formed by an echo re- 
verberating their self-praise. When rich, they are the 
most desperate of critics, as above dependence and out of 
the reach of appeal and censure. 

There are certain marks by which you may infallibly 
know the amateur author. He is always declaiming 
against the pecuniary profits of literature, though we doubt 
whether he would venture to carry out the same doctrine 
in matters of business, or in his luxurious recreations of a 
less spiritual description. He lives on his own estate or 
income, but on other people's ideas. He gives for love 
what he pilfers through mean ambition. He is the less 
conscientious on this point, as his labors bring him in no 
returns. Yet we have known those who pretend to write 
only for amusement, to come to that pass as to be not 
a little solicitous to procure remuneration. Such boasters 
we have known refused any assistance in their literary 
schemes ; and, not to bo harsh, we think they deserve the 
humiliation, at least, of temporary neglect. 

Amateur writers rarely undertake works of length or 
research ; and yet tliey are very apt to take a writer to 
task who devotes iiimself to literary occupation in the 
minor classic forms of writing. Unable themselves to 
write good magazine papers, and reading (as they must) 
many inferior ones, they confuse good and bad together. 
They endeavor to catch the high tone of criticism, and 
while mispraising daubs of historical pieces, pass by with 

4* 



66 LITERARY STUDIES. 

ignorant scorn, the most delicate miniature sketches of 
manners, or vivid portraits of character. 

They injure the true author, who unites a love for his 
profession, deep interest in his subject, and an honest in- 
dependence, with the aim of procuring a sufficient liveli- 
hood. If writings are to be procured for nothing, nothing 
will be paid. Cheapness, not merit, will become the object 
of publishers, and the deterioration of literature must infal- 
libly ensue. The value of a thing has been stated (some- 
what sophistically) to be what it will bring. This has by 
no means been an universal or a just test in literary pro- 
ductions, for the flimsiest of which the highest prices are 
paid. What could Bacon get now-a-days if he sent his 
essays to the magazines ? His late (and successful) imi- 
tator, doubtless, would realize little more. 

Few amateur authors feel any real sympathy for literary 
men. There is no fellow-feeling existing between the in- 
dustrious and ardent scholar, and the lively voluptuary 
and genteel wit. Independence of literary profits causes 
indifference, and sometimes an ill-concealed contempt. 
Are the hard toil, the misappreciated aims, the uncertain 
gains of a writer mentioned ? they are heard with coolness, 
and answered by a shrug. Want of money appears want 
of moral principle or of respectability. They dread duns, 
poor authors, unpopular poets. Fame and a garret are the 
topics of their heartless ridicule. An amateur author is, 
in a word, an amphibious sort of creature ; out of the pale 
of true writers, and yet classed by all with the mob of 
scribblers. They decry their own writings, with more of 
truth than they are aware of; and ironically pronounce 
their own eulogy in the censure of another. They are 
bitter bad judges of others ; and the most ingenuous of 



AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS. 67 

egotists. They turn self-tormentors to be idolized by the 
public : they offer themselves up, on the shrine of their 
egregious self-love, a willing sacrifice, and in order to pro- 
pitiate popular regard. To the above sweeping charges, 
certain exceptions are to be made. One in particular we 
must not neglect — John Waters, the elegant contributor to 
the Knickerbocker, a gentleman of delicate fancy, neat 
humor, and crisped style, who every now and then delights 
the public with charming morceaux, frequently and closely 
reminding us of the quaint yet true touches of Elia's pen- 
cil. Such amateur writers are rare indeed amid a crowd 
of pretenders and assuming coxcombs. Most of the better 
description of amateur authors would translate better into 
friendly critics, liberal patrons, and unpretending lovers of 
literature. In modern times, an amateur author of genius 
is next to an anomaly. The labors of such a man cannot 
be repaid by mere popularity. Even the great poets of 
tliis century have obtained large sums for their MSS. 
Scott is a notable instance ; but it were well for letters that 
few amass the fortune of the great novelist. Yet, from 
Shakspeare to Wordsworth, the poets have been at least 
comfortably provided for, being gifted with a reasonable 
share of prudence — an eye to the main chance. 

From amateur authors we pass to small critics, a natural 
transition, as these form a division of the same general 
class. Like the first, they are rarely writers by profes- 
sion, though we have Dennises and Giffords in the craft. 
Generally, the small critic is an unblushing pretender, 
without the slightest claims to respect. He is to the great 
critic, the original judge, what the minute philosopher is 
to Plato or Bacon. He is great in little things, and con- 
versely little in great things. His genius is bent on inves- 



68 LITERARY STUDIES. 

tigating trifles. Ho is an ingenious perverter of sense, 
from blindness at not seeing the printer's blunders, or a rapid 
writer's slips in orthography. He is strongest in punctua- 
tion and prosody. If an editor, he is in mortal dread of live- 
ly contributors, mistaking a satire on vice for a condemna- 
tion of virtue, and a homily on hypocrisy for a burlesque 
on religion. Of poetry he is the verbal critic, and from 
his literalness, spoils the beauty of a fine passage because 
he cannot see the fitness of a choice epitliet. Correctness 
is the height of his ambition. He remarks how many lines 
in a poem end with a monosyllable, or with a similar ter- 
mination. He pretends to be skilful in metres and the art 
of poetry. By this he intends the rules of Aristotle, and 
Bossu, and Blair, and not the divine instincts of the glorious 
Afflatus. But he does by no means invariably enunciate 
his judgment in print, he oftener talks than writes criticism. 
In a private circle he afl:ects the dictatorship of letters. If 
he has a relation, a man of talent, he patronizes him as a 
respectable writer. A third rate politician, who amuses 
him by cunning flatteries, he estimates much higher. 
Trash is his favorite term for all he cannot understand, and 
especially for all keen satire that lie suspects may have a 
bearing upon himself. He makes the most egregious blun- 
ders, saying, this will not last, of an immortal work ! or, 
he will soon break down, of a man whose noble enthusiasm 
appears to his contracted soul little better than midsummer 
madness. 

The small critic is delighted with petty beauties and the 
minutest details. He loves still more to carp on petty 
faults in a great man, and thinks he makes a fine discovery 
when he meets a trivial flaw. He looks, as it were, through 
an inverted telescope, and to his eye great objects diminish. 



AMATEUR AUTHORS AND SMALL CRITICS. 69 

He makes great things appear small, and the little less. 
His ideas are on the descending scale ; his eyes contract 
to a mere point of littleness; he is the critic of Lilliput. 

Originality puts him out; holdness he styles extrava- 
gance, and acknowledges none but imitative excellence. 
All inventors he looks upon as arrogant interlopers. He is 
distrustful of novelty, and apprehends failure in every new 
scheme. He cannot distinguish between freshness of feel- 
ing and affectation. He has a horror of individuality, and 
will not allow the weight of personal impressions. Strong 
passion he accounts a weak prejudice, and the sincere con- 
victions of a pure spirit " idols of the cave." Indignation 
at meanness and a scorn of rascality, he terms " whim- 
whams and prejudice." 

As he is a trite critic and a stale theorist, so is he also 
a false logician. He is, indeed, a mere special pleader. 
He cavils at literal mistakes, and disputes terms rather 
than abstract truths. He is a newspaper Thomas Aqui- 
nas, or the Duns Scotus of a monlhly. Magazines he is 
apt to hold in supreme contempt, triough for his life he 
cannot write a decent article for one. Voluminous works 
awe him into silence. Erudition is to him the greatest of 
bug-bears. Lest he should be discovered as an ignoramus, 
he never pretends to discredit the pretences of pedantry. 
He swells the train of such by his pomp and boasting. 
Since he has no genuine acquirements, he cannot distin- 
guish the false wares, and consequently equally applauds 
the jewel and the mock paste. 

Small critics may be found among two classes of peo- 
ple, in greater abundance than anywhere else ; among so 
called sensible people, who have no real pretensions to 
letters, though they affect to speak critically on all points, 



t^ LITERARY STUDIES. 

and mere bibliographers, makers of catalogues, collectors, 
book-sellers and auctioneers. People of sense in ordinary 
matters, and men intelligent in their own walk of life, but 
who have never received any tincture of literature, make 
the most opinionated of all critics. A carpenter expects 
to graduate the powers of the human mind, and a stone 
mason to overthrow one of Ariosto's castles. Thinking to 
bring everything to a common standard, the illiterate ima- 
gine themselves to be as good judges of right and wrong 
in morals, as of the beautiful and odious in sesthetics. 
They are keen at a bargain, and confide without doubt in 
their own decisions on works of genius. The same peo- 
ple who talk pertly of Milton and Wordsworth, would 
think it absurd for a blacksmith to attempt to take a watch 
to pieces. Yet the difference of difficulty, between the 
two operations, is by no means great. And, after all, the 
immediate popularity of most writers rests chiefly upon 
such readers as these ; the worthy, fit audience, though 
few, finally give reputation. Meanwhile, however, the 
mob of readers follow established names and reigning 
fasiiiouH ; they follow their chosen leaders with implicit 
credulity. 

Bibliographic critics are learned in title pages, indexes, 
editions. Their judgments are traditionary ; their opi- 
nions hereditary. They think by proxy, and talk by rote. 
One of this sort reads everything and feels nothing; he 
is a walking catalogue ; a peripatetic companion to the 
library ; he knows the names of all the authors that have 
lived. "In books, not authors, studious is my lord." 
Yet such is a useful character ; a guide to the literary 
voyager ; a conductor of the literary diligence. He is 
well in his place if he will only remain quietly in it; but 
the difficulty is to keep him there. 



FEMALE NOVELISTS 



The real genius of the t'emtile mind, in two classes of 
prose fiction, appears to be universally confessed, i. e., in 
the delineation of the artificial in manners, and the natural 
in sentiment : in the novel of manners, as Evelina ; and 
in the novel of sentiment, as the Simple Story. Ridicule 
and pathos, these furnish the appropriate weapons, and oc- 
cupy the legitimate provinces of the female novelist. In 
these departments they reign supreme. Manly writers 
may have at their command a wider vocabulary of indig- 
nant sarcasm or exhibit profounder views of character : 
may paint an absurdity in more glowing colors, and more 
grotesque forms, or display a superior exuberance of comic 
fancy ; but they cannot trifle with such abandon and ease 
as a female wit : their wit may carry more weight, but it 
is less bright and cutting than a woman's. Men reason 
better, but they cannot rally so well ; and raillery, in ordi- 
nary talk, bears the palm from ratiocination. Masculine 
satire is best adapted for the dissection of character and 
real things, and not so well fitted for depicting mannerisms. 
Women observe and note all the varieties of the genus od- 
dity, more readily than men, and with a certain instinctive 
nicety of taste and discrimination, they describe the varying 



■72 LITERARY STUDIES. 

and almost imperceptible shades of manners. From an 
educated sense of propriety in behavior, and the restraints 
of decorum and etiquette, they are rendered more critical 
judges of the nice observances of polite breeding, and the 
opposite gaucheriesof an impolite or rustic bearing. Mere 
external minutiae engage their attention so much as to be- 
get an almost pedantic regard for certain forms of society, 
and a horror of all solecisms, which they almost rank with 
criminal offences. They are, for this reason, perfectly at 
home either in criticising or describing the persons or 
events of a ball-room, the boudoir, theatre, concert, or sa- 
loon. With a quick eye they note each and every devia- 
tion from the existing code of fashion, whether it be in 
dress, manners or conversation. So much for the satirical 
powers of the sex. 

A similar analogy holds in respect to the talent for sen- 
timental description. Great poets, like Shakspeare, and 
painters of man, as Fielding, for instance, deal more with 
the passions than the sentiments, which require finer 
handling, to borrow a phrase from tlie artist. A middle 
range, between high passion and indiflerence, the pathos of 
domestic tragedy, the prose imagination of the poet, depict- 
ing scenes of ordinary or even of humble life, appear to 
fall within the sphere of female genius. Few masculine 
writers (even among poets) have done full justice to the 
noblest specimens of the female character, whilst, at the 
same time, it must be confessed that no female painter has 
ever been able to grasp very many traits of the characters 
of men, or to realize the immense discrepancies between 
the different ranks. The best women are ignorant, pracli- 
cally, of the lowest forms of humanity (still noble in the 
most utter degradation) ; and those who are such cannot 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. 73 

throw any light upon the subject from their own pens. 
Whole classes of society are thus excluded from the vision 
of the fair author, and the motley manners of many men. 
We have had no female Ulysses or Homer. At the same 
time there is, nevertheless, a wide field to be explored, of 
private history and domestic life. There are the mani- 
fold windings of the female heart to be threaded (an Arach- 
ne's web) ; there is the beautiful nature of childhood to 
unfold, the growing beauty of the womanly maiden ; and 
the proper audience (of readers) is composed of characters 
of the same stamp, sweet children, innocent girlhood, fair 
virginity, womanly beauty, inspiring love. From the bud 
to the full blown flower, from her offspring (with its 
opening mind and inquisitive tongue), to the lovely crea- 
ture that bore it, a precious burden ; from these come the 
lessons of life, to these they are properly addressed, and 
by one of themselves. Yes ! women write for women, 
and so they should : let men explore the baser parts of 
human nature ; let it be their business (a hateful task) to 
torture the guilty soul into penitence, religion, and virtue. 
It is for woman to weave garlands of immortal beauty for 
the brow of goodness and happy duty ; and to wreathe 
chaplets for the crowning graces of the confiding, the 
affectionate, and the pure. By way of illustrating the 
above remarks, we shall, in particular, proceed to notice 
the fictions of Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Inchbald, who 
stand foremost in the two classes we have undertaken to 
describe. We shall reserve a page or two for Mrs. Sheri- 
dan and Miss Bremer, not forgetting an incidental notice 
of other female writers of eminence in the same depart- 
ment. 

First, however, of the two classical painters we men- 



74 LITEKARY STUDIES. 

tioned, the latter of whom wo phice at the head of all 
female novelists and prose writers, for qualities both of 
head and heart, which rarely meet in union. Many of 
our fair readers may have to be told that these capital 
writers were the peculiar favorites of their day ; though 
we dare to say that by the class for whom tiieir works 
were written and appropriately addressed, they are almost 
entirely unknown. This is more particularly the case 
with regard to the present generation of readers. Old 
ladies and young women of a certain age, have thumbed 
Camilla and the Simple Story, aye, and well. Yet, while 
the modern lady has every new novel on her table, we 
seldom see the Simple Story ; never Nature and Art, 
more frequently Evelina, and Cecilia hardly at all. We 
trust these suggestions may not be wholly profitless, but 
induce a return to tliose standard productions, not only 
unsurpassed but unequalled by any attempts of the kind at 
present. None of the fashionable novelists of our present 
era can hit off a city fop like Miss Burney, or melt the 
heart with no unfeigned emotion like the creator of Miss 
Milner, and Dorriforth, and Sand ford. There is a smart- 
ness, a shrewdness of observation in the authoress of 
Evelina, to which neither Lady Blessington, nor Mrs. 
Gore, nor any writer of her school, can lay any preten- 
sions. Neither do we possess in English, at tiie present 
moment, a writer who can excite our indignation of time- 
serving in the bishop, and hypocritical severity in th.e 
unjust judge ; who can quicken our admiration of forti- 
tude, patience, and noble generosity, or smite the heart 
witli a weight of melancholy anguish at the untimely fate 
of the poor victim of sin in power and " the pride of place," 
as the admirable writer of Nature and Art. The more 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. 75 

popular material of which Miss Burney's works are com- 
posed, may have preserved them from oblivion, but the 
matter is of an inferior cast. 

She is perfectly successful where only smartness and 
shrewd perception are requisite. In the piiilosophy of the 
heart, she is quite deficient. Affectation, conventional 
propriety, and mawkish sensibility, usurp the place of real 
modesty and genuine feeling. Her forte lies in ridicule of 
ignorant assumption, and especially of cockney preten- 
sions. She is the satirist of Cockayne, and dwells so 
much in this region, that we are apt to suspect it to be her 
favorite locality. A writer or talker rarely rises above 
an absurdity which he or she is continually harping upon ; 
and affected disgust not unfrequently conceals a genuine 
sympathy. The painter of the Branghtons had something 
of the same narrowness of views and petty ambition that 
distinguished her fictitious characters. And what we 
always inferred, from the internal evidence of her works, 
we find abundantly confirmed in the memoirs of this clever 
woman, lately published, in which it is almost inconceiva- 
ble what a compound of small sins represented the social 
nature of Miss Burney. A moral coxcomb, a pedantic 
courtier, an affected wit, an insipid companion, her auto- 
biographical notes can leave no other impression than that 
of inspiring an honest contempt for this frivolous, flattered, 
yet enslaved, minion of fortune. If this criticism appear 
harsh, we appeal directly to tlie volumes in question, where 
the data for a correct judgment are abundant. 

We would speak and write in quite a different tone of 
that peerless woman, Mrs. Inchbald — admirable not only 
for her writings, but also for her personal character and 



76 LITERARY STUDIES. 

the beauty of her daily life ; an actress of fascinating 
beauty and attractive grace, yet 

" Chaste as the icicle, 
That's cruded by the frost from purest snow, 
And hangs on Dian's temple :" 

ainid the splendid temptations and pleasures offered by the 
admirers of the stage to its heroines; a noble-hearted wo- 
man struggling with poverty to accumulate a comfortable 
independence for her poor relations ; sitting without a fire, 
the cold winter through, to procure fuel for a sister — an 
act of Christian charity worthy of a saint ; and, in her 
entire conduct, exhibiting a spirit of love and self-denial 
that cannot be too highly lauded. Neither should we for- 
get her greatest fault, most pardonable and innocent in her, 
the early coquetry with which she has been charged, and 
some of the romantic freaks of her girlish days, recorded 
by the dullest of biographers, the dull and voluminous 
Boaden. Her later romance was of a deep and melan- 
choly cast ; her love for a married man. Dr. Warren, in 
its whole history, pure and unsullied, and her grief at his 
death. Leigh Hunt has done noble justice to her life and 
memory, in a paper of the Seer. But the best things have 
been said of our delightful authoress by a writer in the 
Boston Miscellany, with whose lucid and elegant pen we 
shall not vie. Her writings were fresh draughts of her 
vivid experience of life. We apprehend a portion of early 
biography, in parts of the career of Miss Milner and the 
inflexible, yet benevolent, Sandford, is a portrait instinct 
with truth. Mrs. Inchbald has, in our judgment, surpass- 
ed all female writers in delineating the passion of love, as 
it is frequently seen ; and though more elevated or more 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. 77 

profound masters of the human heart could, unquestionably, 
surpass any attempt of hers to display the whole resources 
of the passion in men, yet no masculine writer could, by 
any possibility, excel in fidelity, naturalness and exquisite 
discernment, the finished portrait of Miss Milner, the capri- 
cious, affectionate, coquettish, yet obedient, ward ; the half- 
spoiled child of fortune, at last humbled to the dust and 
breathing out the last sighs of penitence, attended by the 
friend and censor of her youth. All the characters in the 
Simple Story are admirably drawn ; the haughty and aus- 
tere Dorriforth ; that noble, rough, true Christian, Sand- 
ford, a severe censor while he thought censure called ibr, 
but melting with benevolence at the sick bed of the repent- 
ant worldling. Miss Woodley is one of the most sensible 
and truly feminine of our author's characters. " Nature 
and Art'' should be read by every young man and woman, 
impressing, as it does, an indignant scorn of the curi'ent 
hypocrisies, the legalized villany, the conventional morality 
of men of the world, and of the customs of society. The 
style and execution of these novels is classic ; graceful 
and fluent, a study and a model. The supreme power of 
the author lies in pathetic situation and nobleness of senti- 
ment, alternately. Few scenes in any work of fiction can 
compare, for deep interest, with the trial scene in the 
second novel. As a beacon to those captivated by the 
fame of a fashionable coquette, we recommend the sad his- 
tory of the ill-fated Miss Milner. To encourage the love 
of virtue, we would point to the characters of the elder and 
younger Henry (father and son). In a word, the moral 
value of these admirable works is, at least, equal to the 
breathless interest they excite as works of fiction. 

Several female writers maintain a respectable rank in 



78 LiTP:RARy studies. 

the same department with the two writers whose merits 
have been alone discussed ; whilst there are others excel- 
lent in an inferior grade. Amongst forgotten writers and 
books, we may mention the History of David Simple, by 
a relation of Fielding (if we are not mistaken), and a 
woman of fine sense and feeling, the mistress of a refined 
and simple style ; the pleasing fictions of the authoress of 
Emily Montague, and Sidney Biddulph, a novel by Mrs. 
Sheridan, the wife of Dr. Johnson's old rival, the niece-in- 
lavv of Swift's friend, and the mother of Richard Brinsley. 
Dr. Johnson is reported to have said of this lady, that she 
had hardly a right to make her readers suffer so much ; 
that he thought she exercised her power of raising the feel- 
ings of compassion and sympathy for the distresses of others 
to too high a pitch. 

The great number of female novelists, during the 
present century, is a feature in the literary character of 
the age to be noted. To run over the mere names would 
prove a tedious and profitless labor ; but we may advert 
to a few — the strong, practical sense of Edgeworth, 
adapted to moral tales for the young — of Opie and More 
to impress religious principle as well. The pleasant 
village histories of Milford ; the shrewd speculations (best 
in her early sketches) of Martineau ; tlie wild and brilliant 
imagination of Mrs. Shelley ; and tiie more quiet and agree- 
able attempts of Mary Howitt (the English Sedgwick). 
From a large number of elegant-minded female writers of 
our own country, we may select two women of pure genius, 
as the best examples of American female talent. Miss Sedg- 
wick and Mrs. Kirkland, women of whom any country 
might be proud. 

Since writing the above, we have fallen upon, by the 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. <9 

merest chance, a copy of Sidney Biddulph, to which we 
must devote a page or two, worthy as it is of a much moro 
extended notice. This is an admirable novel of the serious 
kind, a true picture of domestic life, and fraught with a 
certain classic grace, by a remarkably sweet and elegant 
woman, who deserves to be much better known. As a 
mere specimen of style and artful narrative, it is worthy 
of preservation, to say nothing of the deeply-interesting in- 
cidents of the story and the varied characters themselves. 
Yet, for our own part, we read the book less for the story 
and plot than for the sentiment and reflections it contains ; 
and, in general, we care little for the very portion of a 
prose fiction that most interests the majority of readers. It 
is for this reason, among others, we are such admirers of 
Miss Bremer's novels, which are voted tame by the stimu- 
lating and highly-wrought tales of blood and terror. A 
sensible old sea-captain of our acquaintance thinks some 
portions of the Swedish novels are even " puerile ;" and 
an acute, most discerning legal gentleman can see nothing 
at all in them. Ah ! better to read a chapter of simple 
domestic history than records of crime and violence. By 
morbid sympathy, a weak mind readily becomes a convert 
to admiration of desperadoes and captivating villains; 
while, by a natural and healthy process, the virtuous mind 
receives new vigor from pure thought and the unambitious 
details of contented domesticity. An intellect that has 
become enfeebled by the extravagant demands upon it of 
Spagnialetto painters of vice and wretchedness, is nourished 
and strengthened by scenes of rational happiness and exam- 
ples of retiring and private nobleness. The moral of Sid- 
ney Biddulph is one by no means agreeable to the mere 
novel-reader, or to one ignorant of life, who invariably 



80 MTKKAKY STl'IMKS. 

rxiH'cts \o s(>o virlU(> rcwiUiltMl aiul vioo pnnislunl, oithor 
at tlu> <Mul i)t" a play or novel, or at tlio conclusion of this 
luiiuan t'xistonco ; l)ut a very uiortifyinj!: yet most just 
I'onohision, so neatly twprossod by tiio authoress herself, 
that wo borrow iier lann;uai2;e, 'Mhat neither prudence, fore- 
sioht, nor even tiie best ilisposition that tho hunrnn heart is 
capahlt^ oi\ nvc, oi' themselves, sullicient to defend us ntjainst 
tlu> inevitable ills that sonietinies are allotttnl even to tho 
best;" or, as Shirley despondingly sinjj^s, "there is no 
arnjor ajjjainst Fate ! " more wisely, perhaps, we should say 
ProvidtMice, that '* brinot^th good out of evil." 

We have alhuKnl to Miss HreuHM': it were an act of 
injustiet^ to Ao no mori\ anil we teel it a matttM' oi' iluty 
to add our slight tribut(^ tt> tiu> inetMise waUed across tho 
wide otMMUi to that northern land, the land of tho Sagas, 
of \"asa, and Adolphus o\' Owwsiv'wu, anil Christina, of 
Charles \ll. ami 'JVgner. This wt^ glaiily pay. Miss 
Bromor is tho ujost prominent writtM* of the day, in lier 
peculiar department of fiction, m pictures of home life and 
domestic maimers, lividy ami genuine. Her admira- 
bio Swedish novtds are not oidy national wmks, but fitted 
for all lands. 'I'his ailmirablc writer has been compared 
to Miss Ivlgeworth, whom slu> greatly surpasses in senti- 
miMitai description and delii-ate fancy. 'I'he Swedish 
poetess is a livelier ami more dramatic painter than the Irish 
wit, who is a woman oi' sound, rather than oi' fine, sense. 
Miss Hremer is much the dee>ptM* writer, sees further into 
lunnan nature, has more versatility ; sometimes startling 
and prolinindly philosoj)hic, yet, in general, cheerful and 
piquant ; a moral poit o( the fireside, with some resem- 
blance to Cowper and the homelier pathos of Wordsworth. 
Her »' musa pedestris" is heightened, not unfi-equenlly, by 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. 81 

an infusion of German fancies, and deepened by the seri- 
ous and noble thoughtfulness of that melancholy North- 
land. Though the scenery, the landscape, the background 
of the Swedish novels is comparatively new to us, known 
only before in the pages of the magnificent Tegner and 
the tasteful Longfellow, yet the characters are as familiar 
as those we meet every day. 

Who has not known personages of age, distinction, and 
family, like the President, the Colonel, the Judge, conser- 
vatives of the best class, sticklers for dogmas and usages ? 
yet men of clear heads, obscured by few prejudices of 
education or society — respectable characters, worthy citi- 
zens ; all little fitted for our country, in a political point of 
view, since they form timid statesmen and habits of nar- 
row diplomacy. Then, again, we have often seen head- 
strong cornets, pining students, romantic schoolmasters, 
like the heroes of the second rank in the same works. 
The old ladies are equally well made out — whether stately 
widows of condition, the relicts of distinguished officials ; 
old maids, chatty and active ; or matronly dames, most 
worthy and excellent. The young women generally par- 
take of the species Sylphide, and have a certain aerial 
grace and softness. In each novel, we have to remark 
the recurrence of these different types of character. The 
writer herself generally figures as the relater ; in the 
Neighbors, she is the doctor's wife; in the President's 
Daughters, she is the governess ; in all, she is a friend of 
the family, and ranks as one of the useful and agreeable 
among the poorer relations. 

A wide range of character and variety of situation and 
incident, mark the Swedish novels, which, besides the 
higher qualities we have claimed for them, are extremely 

VOL. II. 5 



SS LITEllARY STUDIKS. 

atrrceablo lor the essay-mattor, the specuhition and thought 
they contain, no less than lor the playful humor and ge- 
nial Flemish distinctness which characterize the same 
scenes. The beauty of naturalness we further notice, and 
of characters for the most part, one cannot avoid liking or 
sympatliizing with. In the last, Strife and Peace, we do 
not recollect a harsh (not to say worthless) character.* 
This, for many readers, is an advantage. The student 
of human nature must see all men, but many should learn 
only tlie best cliaracters, as they want strength and pene- 
tration to see the good in the evil. The end, the tone, the 
moral of these works is pure and lu\dthy ; with no vitiat- 
in<T influences, no corrupting suggestions. But most ex- 
cellent, if only read to cherish riglit and noble feelings, 
and confirm good and high principles. 

Mrs. Emily Flygare (is not this possibly a nomme de 
plume, or synonyme of Bremer ?) is a writer of precisely 
the same quality and grade. The Professor's Favorites is 
a fair match for the President's Daugliters ; tliougli per- 
haps not equal to the Neighbors or Homo. JNIiss Austin is 
another Britisli authoross with wlinni Miss Bremer has 
been conq^ared. They resemble each otlier certainly in 
the fact, that they are both writers of the domestic novel, 
as it may be called ; yet Miss Austin is quite deficient in 
the strikingly poetical qualities, which relieve even the 
homeliest details of tlie Swedish novels. She is quite pro- 
saic, and if possible a little exclusive ; periuips too much 
taken up with titled personages. Thougli decorous, proper, 
sensible and judicious, where do you find in her novels, the 

* The Colonel can luuitly bo called one of the characters ; as he 
plays no part, soon leaves the scene, and is nltogether only passive. 



FEMALE NOVELISTS. 83 

vivacity, the humor of tlie Neiglibors or Homo ? the depth 
of feeling in these works, as well as in Strife and Peace, 
can nowiiere be paralleled in Prejudice or Mansfield Park. 

To the two prominent names in American female au- 
thorship, we sliould have added that of Mrs. Childs, a pure, 
sweet, amiable writer, whose pliilanthropy is unbounded 
and carried out in deeds of practical benevolence. The 
l)roductions of this lady are conceived in the most genial 
humor and executed with equal beauty and facility. 

We have said, women write for women ; we should fur- 
ther remark that there is a race of masculine writers, with 
feminine delicacy of mind, who ought to be added to the 
list of novelists for a lady's reading. Such are the exqui- 
site sentimental painters, Richardson, Marivaux, Macken- 
zie, Jean Paul and Goldsmith. These are peculiarly au- 
thors for women. Rousseau, Sterne and Goethe, equal 
masters of the female heart, and whose works contain the 
purest essence of ethereal sentiment, are dangerous writ- 
ers, inasmuch as their works are fraught with deleterious 
influences, which require a strong intellect and a vigorous 
moral sense to withstand. — American literature can point 
to three names of the first rank of excellence in this way 
of writing, Dana, Hawthorne, and Washington Irving. 
We reverse the usual order of merit, as we conceive Mr. 
Irving to be nmcli inferior, in this respect (abundantly 
made up by his humor, power of description, narrative, 
and researches), to the first and second writers, who are 
so much less known. Dana has a vein of fresh, original, 
deep feeling — at times most powerful in its expression, and 
always strong and simple — while Irving's best sentiment 
is borrowed from Mackenzie and Goldsmith. Paul Fel- 
ton, Edward and Mary, the Son, are much superior to 



84 LITERARY STUDIES. 

anything of the same kind in Irving. Dana has a deeper 
as well as a more original genius : yet the exquisite comic 
pictures of Irving arc quite out of tlie reach of the more 
serious writer. Mawtiiorne is a true poet and admirable 
writer — what fancy, wliat deep melancholy, what inven- 
tion, what pure, cheerful gladness, what pictures, in his 
delightful tales. He can excite almost terror, and almost 
mirth : hovering ever between tiie two. And his style ! 
a mountain-spring is not more limpid and transparent : his 
genuine Faith, his manly Love, liis true Religion, arc not 
to be forgotten. Why does not this choicest of our writers 
give us more twice-told tales, or a new series of charming 
historical sketclies for children, wiiich all ages may read 
with pleasure ? Wiio hut lie can give us the true history 
of Salem witclicraft, lialf legend, half sad reality ? What 
stores of romance yet unworked, lie hidden in tiie early 
history of New Enoland ? 



XI 



SINGLE-SPEECH POETS, 



A REMARK of Horace Walpole (that most acute judge of 
the niceties of literature) is set down in the Walpoliana, 
on this very topic, and which, indeed, had suggested the 
following illustrations of his criticism. He speaks of writ- 
ers, who, like certain plants, flower but once — whose poetic 
genius bloomed early, for a single time, and never again 
put forth a bud. These writers, in poetry, resemble single- 
speech Hamilton in oratory (the coincidence furnishes the 
excuse of the caption), and ever remain a source of literary 
curiosity — a problem not to be readily solved on ordinary 
premises. It is one of the most curious of all literary cu- 
riosities, and yet we do not remember that D'Israeli has 
devoted a paper to the subject, nor even made any refer- 
ence to it — an omission quite unaccountable in him, as it 
falls naturally within his province. 

A beautiful Anthology might be collected from the writ- 
ings of poets, who have exhausted themselves, as it were, 
in a single effort ; caught but a single glance of the divi- 
nity ; but once felt "the god." In a supplement to this 
exquisite bouquet, richer than that of Ellis or Longfellow, 
tiiough they come very near to the ideal we speak of, might 
be included the few fine short poems, of those who liave 



'^'<> LlTllRMCY STUDIES. 

writl(Mi lon^r wiirks of mediocre nr perhaps i>V(M1 doubt- 
fiil stiuuliii<j;. A low (Iclioiito mor{)eaux ofSouthoy will bo 
prtvstM-vcd by lui aUri'tioimlo nico of nuKhM'^j, wlioso boiio- 
voloMcr 0V(Mi (.•iiiiuot prcvful Iht' utter oblivion ol" liis im- 
wii'ldy t'pii'jil atliMnpts. I'lvrn CJay, who wiolc W(»ll always, 
lias boon iminorlali/.ecl by bis llalbuls aiul I'ablos, ratiuu* 
tlian by liis Trivia. 

Anolbcr class, still, bosiilo tbo writors of ono or more 
choico sbort poems, ami tbo writers of lonj^ and dull insipid 
productions, is tbat of the j^real writers wbo have written 
nuicb, and of wbose works, even wben equally ilno, tbe 
shortest arc tbo best known, n\eridy because they are brief. 
Tims, J)ryd(Mrs Alt>xander's b'east is known to many, from 
being met with in all tlu» ordinary st^leetions and ele«iant 
extracts, while ills no less admirable romanlie tal(\s tVom 
Jtoccaccio and C'haucer, his ileli^iitful Fables, l^pistles to 
Uldbam, and (Hinjijreve, and Kmdli'r {(n\ which l\»pe could 
only rejlnt')y Secular Masipu^, and his vigorous political 
satires, arc comi)arativtdy unkiu>wn. Thousands havo 
read, or suiiix, or beard suno;, Vouni:^ Loi'binvar, lor the 
lumdreds who have read Marmii>n. And Moiu't^ is the poet 
of tbo parlor, for the Mcdodies he has wrillcMi, while his 
Lulla Kookh is read as a critical duty, and by way ot 
task. 

According \o a I'lassilleation likt^ the abovt\ many i)leas. 
ing vtn'siliers wouhl rank viM-y high among tlie minor 
l\>ets, whose standing is low among th(^ master Hards. 

As to the philosophy o( the matter, we confess it iiu^x- 
plicable. Why one whohasonc(^ sut'eiHMl«Hl shouKl not tK> 
equally well again, many causes may be assigntnl ; yet 
not one of them carrit^s sull'icient weight to settle tbe (iut\s. 
tion determinatelv. 'i'hi^ various reasons ari^ sullicientlv 



SINGLE-SPEECH POETS. 87 

plausible, yet may be easily set aside on further reflection. 
Sheer indolence ! cries one ; timidity, exclaims another : 
want of leisure, reasons a third ; rather, want of power, 
adds a fourth ; perhaps, all together, liberally concludes a 
fifth. 

Some persons seem to regard these writers — as some old 
dogmatist called Goldsmith — inspired idiots, who have, by 
chance, hit upon a new thought or view, which they want 
skill and training to follow up — as delicious harmonies may 
float into the mind of one who is ignorant of the science of 
sweet sounds. 

In truth, the fact is as wonderful as that would be (of 
which we are ignorant, if it has ever happened) of a painter 
who had finished but one good picture in the course of his 
life — who had caught for a single time the cordial and 
kindly aspect of nature — who, once only, had gained power 
to interpret the soul, speaking in the face. Who ever 
heard, or read of, or saw, the single celebrated production 
of a sculptor, or musical composer, or architect, who had 
anything of a desirable reputation ? We do not speak of 
the clever things done by ingenious amateurs, but of single 
Works (not Plays, as Ben Jonson used to distinguish), ex- 
ecuted by professional artists. 

Yet as matters of literary and personal history, that was 
really the case of the authors of the Bu rial of Sir John Moore 
and the Ode to the Cuckoo. Wolfe wrote two or three other 
fine things in verse and prose, yet nothing comparable to this 
master-piece. Logan is known only by the ode we refer 
to. The Braes of Yarrow enshrine the memory of Hamil- 
ton of Bangour, and have led greater bards to the scene, 
to offer up their tributes, still inferior to the first. Why- 
is this all we have of these delicate poets ? With such 



88 LITERARY STUDIES. 

fancy, such feeling, a taste so refined, a versification so 
graceful, how happens it we hear no more strains from 
these nightingales of a night ? Not wholly so besotted as 
to be careless of fame ; rather, so far from that, as, in the 
case of Wolfe, to be sensitively alive to generous praise 
and to noble action ; and, as to Logan, we believe he, too, 
was a clergyman, a retired scholar, and man of pure taste. 
Both were (if we recollect aright) invalids, constitutionally 
feeble, and hence incapable of long flights of fancy or close 
study. They had leisure — poetic impulses could not have 
been wanting, for subjects and occasions never wholly fail 
the Muse ; the admiration of friends, we may conclude, 
was theirs. A single obstacle only remains, and that fur- 
nishes, probably, the occasion or reason of their silence — 
a fastidious taste, like Campbell's, who was said to be 
frightened by the shadow of his fame, that could not be 
satisfied with anything short of perfection, which it failed 
to realize. Genuine modesty, and a sensitive tempera- 
ment, were leading traits (we presume, of course) of the 
writers. These held their hand, and restrained the other- 
wise willing pen. The same reasons will not seem to ex- 
cuse the short poems of Raleigh and Wotton, who feared 
no critical tribunals ; whose minds were braced by manly 
action ; who united all characters and talents and accom- 
plishments; who, with learning and (at some period) leisure, 
and fancy, and power, have left a very few and very brief 
copies of verse, worthy of being printed in letters of gold. 
They were not men, like their later brother bards, to enter- 
tain a feeling of despair at ever again equalling the fine 
things they had accomplished early in life. In them, 
therefore, it is but fair to suppose, that the poetic bore a 



SINGLE-SPEECH POETS. 89 

slight proportion to the political and scholastic and business, 
characters, which rendered them famous. 

The minds of men change ; their aims vary at different 
epochs. They entertain different views of life, of action, 
of ambition. Many youthful tastes (the accompaniment 
of animal spirits, rather than the fruit of settled inclina- 
tion) vanish as men grow older. How many young poets 
have settled down into middle-aged prose men ; how many 
airy romancers become converted into matter-of-fact critics. 
Religion, in some instances, teaches (falsely, we conceive) 
the sin of all but devotional strains : unquestionably, when 
pure and noble, the highest kind of verse, but not the only 
allowable form. In this case, too, where piety is per- 
verted, the praises of men appear so worthless and unsatis- 
factory, that the bard relinquishes the exercise of his 
divine gift (in a wrong spirit) before men, that he may 
offer up his praises, pure and unallo3'^ed, with angels and 
the blessed, to the Almighty Giver of the glorious faculty 
itself (among innumerable blessings). 

Various pursuits, too, warp the imagination from poeti- 
cal flights, and confine the studies that arise from fancy 
and taste to a narrow circle, if not consign them over to 
" dumb forgetfulness a prey." Three great lawyers have 
been made out of tolerable poets, who might have ranked 
among the first of the third rank, the Dii Minores of our 
idolatry — Blackstone, Sir William Jones, and Lord Thur- 
low ; judgeships and bishoprics oblige the holders and 
occupants of these stations to hide, sometimes, a rare and 
peculiar talent. Yet some bishops have been wits, as 
Earle and Corbet : though too frequently the office stulti- 
fies the head, while it hardens the heart. 

Without any further attempt at unravelling the causes 
5* 



90 LITERARY STUDIES. 

of this literary phenomenon, we will at once bring together 
the following notices of writers of the kind we have under- 
taken to describe, without pretending (from the nature of 
the case an almost impossible thing) to produce all who 
deserve mention. On the contrary, we can promise to 
quote only a few, as we write from memory, and without 
the means of extending our list. 

To commence with two court poets of the age of 
Charles II., when "the mob of gentlemen who write 
with ease" first appeared. Denham, the fashionable 
poet of his day, now ranks as such in the select col- 
lections, mainly .on the strength of his Cooper's Hill. 
Dorset, one of the most delightful and accomplished 
characters of that court of wits and gallants, is best 
known in poetical history by his ballad, said to have 
been written at sea during the first Dutch war, 1665, the 
night before the engagement. He has penned a couple of 
delightful songs or so, but his poetical claims rest chiefly 
on the ballad. Pomfrefs "Choice" stands quite alone; 
the single popular poem of its author, an agreeable, plea- 
sant piece of versification, presenting the ideal of a quiet, 
comfortable, retired literary life. Swift's version of Ho- 
race's lines is more Horatian, but less English. Cowley 
and Norris, who both translated the philosophic picture of 
Seneca, of a similar strain, are more philosophic and high 
toned, but do not approach so closely the more equal cur- 
rent of daily life. Leigh Hunt has praised Pomfret, and 
somewhere, we think, directly imitated " Choice,^' addmg 
to the verse a grace of his own. Dr. Johnson passed upon 
him no more than a just eulogium. To the masculine mo- 
ralist and the agreeable essayist we bow, in deference to 
their united judgment. John Phillips is famous for his 



SINGLE-SPEECH POETS. 91 

celebrated burlesque of Milton (the " Splendid Shilling"), 
but we can recollect no other poem of his of anything like 
equal merit. ParneJVs Hermit is his chef-d'oeuvre. Many 
who know him as a poet, know nothing of his verses to his 
wife, and one or two other short pieces, almost equally fine. 
Blair^s " Grave" (the resting place of Mortality) has made 
him immortal. Green's " Spleen," and Dyer's " Grongar 
Hill," poems excellent in their different styles of manly 
satire and picturesque description, are, we believe, the only 
works of these authors that have escaped oblivion. As 
writers of single poems, we may, by a forced construction, 
"compel to come in" certain of the old Dramatists, and 
though they do not properly rank under this head, we may 
be glad to eke out our list by such delights of the Muses 
as the noble Dirge in Webster's terrible tragedy, Shirley's 
fine stanzas, and scattered songs, "fancies," and good- 
nights, that occur in the rare old comedies and tragedies : 
from Gammer Gurton's Needle, that can boast the first and 
one of the best drinking songs in the language, down to, 
and half through, the age of Elizabeth, the age of Mar- 
low and his contemporaries, just previous to the golden era 
of the Shaksperean drama. Many of the minor poets, 
whether gay or religious, of the seventeenth century, have 
left sparkling gems, such as the delicate flowers that blos- 
som in the poetic gardens of Carew, Herrick, King, Vaugh- 
an, Lovelace, &;c. We had written thus far, when we 
met with Longfellow's Waif, a delicate and tasteful antho- 
logy. But we think it might be vastly improved by such 
an editor as the writer of the article on Henry Vaughan,* 
who out of that poet has made extracts, finer than the poem 

* Arcturus, vol. i . 



9^ LITERARY STUDIES. 

Mr. Longfellow has selected, and has written about this 
poet and his contemporaries in a charming manner, that 
would have added much to the attraction of the little vo- 
lume. The " Waif should have included a galaxy of 
rare old poems : the later writers are sufficiently well 
known. 

Certain of the noble old prose writers, to be ranked, by 
the production of one fine poem — if by no other claim — 
by title of courtesy, among poets, ought not to be omitted, 
as Bunyan, in the pithy, sententious lines prefixed to his 
"Pilgrim;" Burton's fine versified abstract of his own 
"Anatomy ;" and Waltoji's "Angler's Wish." These are 
" rarely delicate," as Walton says of Marlow and Raleigh's 
delicious verses, " better than the strong lines now in 
voiijue in this critical aire." 

In one department of verse, that of Hymns and the ver- 
sified Psalms of David, some writers are classic from hav- 
ing produced one or two admirable pieces of the kind ; in 
this class come Addison, Pope, Young, Ken, Cowper, He- 
ber, Wotton. 

Many writers, of very considerable pretensions, have 
succeeded in one long poem, but are not generally known 
by any second production of equal value. Of this class 
the best instances are Young, in his " Night Thoughts" — 
hard reading, except in detached passages ; Akenside^s 
" Pleasures of Imagination" (with all his pomp of philo- 
sophic speculation and elaborate fancy, very heavy, for 
these very reasons). All the Pleasures, by the way, of 
Memory and Hope, beside, in these long general poems, are 
far from pleasant reading ; ChurchiU, m liose local and tem- 
porary satires are forgotten and give place to his " Ros- 
ciad," a monument of his sense, acuteness, and happy 



SINGLE-SPEECH POETS. 93 

satire — a gallery of theatrical portraits hit off with the 
justness and vivacity of Pope, and forming a capital sup- 
plement to CoUey Gibber's collection ; Allan Ramsay's 
*' Gentle Shepherd," that Arcadian pastoral ; Garth, in his 
" Dispensary," an author in whom the man and humorist 
was more than a match for the poet ; So?nerville's " Chase," 
pretty fair verse for a sporting country gentleman ; and 
Armstrong's " Art of Preserving Health," a sensible essay 
that might as well have been written in prose. The same 
criticism may be applied to Garth and Somerville. 

Among general readers the Hudihras of Butler is 
eagerly perused by all who delight in the union of sense, 
wit, and learning, all devoted to the cause and end of 
wholesome satire ; yet the other sharp satires of the same 
writer are, virtually, unknown. And the Seasons of 
Thomson, by no means his best poem, is universally read, 
while very few ever think of glancing at the delightful 
" Castle of Indolence," of which he was both creator and 
master. 

Then again, certain fine poems are continually quoted, 
not as the sole efforts, but as the masterpieces of their au- 
thors, quite to the exclusion of any other works of theirs ; 
the selection, for instance, of such fine poems as the Ode 
to the Passions, and the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 
in works on elocution, with which every schoolboy is fami- 
liar, has thrown the other equally fine pieces by the same 
authors, comparatively into the shade. Shenstone's School- 
mistress comes within the same category ; but after all, the 
fame of the poet depends on it alone. The ballad of Jem- 
my Dawson is not superior to many that have been con- 
signed to obscurity ; while the Pastoral Ballad, with a 
certain vein of tenderness, does not rank much above 



94 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Hammond's strain (once called the English Ovid), which 
has been long since, and not unjustly, forgotten. 

A delicate volume might be made up of single poems of 
English and American poets of this century. In English 
poetical literature, Mrs. Southey's Pauper's Death-Bed, 
Noel's Pauper's Funeral, delicate verses of Darley, Mont- 
gomery's Grave, &c., &c. 

Our American Parnassus entertains many occupants, 
who can prefer but a single claim (or two) for possession. 
The following are all of the gems we can, at present, 
recall. The famous song of R. T. Paine, entitled Adams 
and Liberty, though its poetical value we forget, was the 
best paid copy of verses ever printed here, and exceedingly 
popular : the spirited '' Indian Burial Ground," of Fren- 
peau, which Longfellow has lately recovered, and whence 
Campbell borrowed a line or two (a common trick with 
him) : Coke's Florence Vane, Neal's Birth of a Poet, 
Wilde's My Life is like a Summer's Rose, Pierpont's 
affecting lines on his dead child, Lindley Murray's charm- 
ing verses to his wife, Pinckney's spirited and truly poeti- 
cal songs, Aldrich's Death Bed, Field's Dirge on a young 
girl, Woodworth's Old Oaken Bucket, Eastman's Farmer, 
&LC. But our best fugitive poetry has been written by 
prose writers. Irving's delicious lines, the Dull Lecture, 
illustrating, or illustrated by (we know not which), a capi- 
tal picture of Stuart Newton ; and his classic verses to 
the Passaic River, as graceful and picturesque as that 
winding stream. C. C. Moore has in a choice volume, 
among other delicate verses, included three classic poems 
sufficient to secure a place for their author on the same 
shelf with Gray, Campbell, and Logan : the capital humor- 
ous visit of St. Nicholas — with the verses to the Poet's 



SINGLE SPEECH POETS. 



95 



wife, and the lines to his children, accompanying their 
father's portrait : verses worthy of Goldsnnith. A noble 
poenn on Alaric, by Governor Everett ; sonrie fine versions 
from the German, by the Hon. Alexander Everett ; three 
or four admirable pieces by John Waters ; the two last 
addressed to ladies, printed in the American newspaper, 
some six or seven years ago. Nicholas Biddle wrote 
some very agreeable jeux d'esprit and vers de societe. A 
lively epistle of this kind aj^peared in the weekly New 
Mirror last summer. A noble poem, " The Days of my 
Youth and of my Age contrasted," by the Hon. St. Geo. 
Tucker, of Virginia, has been going the rounds of the 
papers for a year past. Can no printed book or magazine 
show us more of the author ? We often ask ourselves 
this question, with regard to many other authors, without 
ever receiving a satisfactory answer. Very many such 
we still remain in utter ignorance of, in common with the 
reading public, and this fact must account for our omis- 
sions. When we think of the stupid long poems, with 
which the world has been deluged for years past, and recol- 
lect how many exquisite brief pieces are lost merely by 
their brevity, as a jewel is li dden in a pile of common 
stones, we often wish that a critical police might be con- 
tinually kept up, to pound all stray poetical cattle ; or, at 
least, to advertise where they might be found. 



X 1 1 . 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 



The day of prefaces and courtly dedications is well nigh 
past. The readers of the present generation are generally 
in too great a hurry to penetrate the inner courts of the 
Temple of Truth, or oftener of Pleasure, to linger long 
about the sacred Porch, and are too apt to neglect the for- 
mal compliments and elaborate address of the janitor, at 
the gate. With a disregard and indifference (more espe- 
cially with us Americans) to the amenities of social inter- 
course, has also been introduced a carelessness on the 
part of authors. Rarely we meet a conciliatory poem or 
an affectionate salutatory ; still less frequently we en- 
counter a critical introduction, or argument of the work. 
Modern society laughs at the studied courtesies of the old 
school of politeness ; and modern critics are equally in- 
clined to ridicule the hyperbolical praises and scholastic 
introductions of their literary forefathers. But let us dis- 
criminate. At the same time, that the herd of authors 
(not very different in the most unpleasant aspects, at -a^iy 
one period from what they are at all others) ran riot in 
extravagant adulations, and prolix, stupid and tiresome 
self-eulogium, or worse yet, self-censure,- there were writ- 
ers livinoj who have made the Preface and the Dedication 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 97 

classical provinces of elegant composition ; whose skill in 
spirited portrait and delicate flattery, in the last depart- 
ment, and whose clear, acute and copious analogies and 
illustration, in the first, have rendered them indispensable 
appendages to the work, we are accustomed to regard as 
standards in their class. 

A preface may be regarded as having the same relation 
to the work that follows, as the symphony bears to the 
opera or oratorio ; a prologue to a play ; or when extend- 
ed and explanatory, as an overture to an opera. It should 
give the reader the ke3^-note to the book itself, and the 
harmonies it is supposed to contain. Or else it should, in 
a bird's-eye view, display the whole scope of the theme, 
with all its bearings. It should rarely admit of an apolo- 
getic tone, and never deprecate the honest severity of just 
criticism. That is a bad book as well as a feeble charac- 
ter, that hegs off from a close inspection. There should 
be no petitio principii, no morbid modesty ; neither any 
false fears, nor artful affectations. Its business is to speak 
the truth, yet not necessarily the whole of the truth. 
It is well to keep something in reserve ; to promise too 
little rather than too much ; to know how to disappoint 
one's friends the right way. 

In the Dedication, the writer makes his bow and pre- 
sents his compliments ; addressing a near friend, or heart's 
idol (a great author or public character, who stands on 
an elevation far above him, yet whom he cherishes with 
an affectionate veneration); and, although the custom is 
rapidly falling into disuse, it seems to us as disrespectful 
to the reader for a writer to omit this piece of introductory 
civility, as it would appear to any well-bred company for 
a person to enter without saluting any member of it, and 



98 LITERARY STUDIES. 

depart in the same graceless manner. A similar omission 
in letters, of an epithet of attachment or regard, strikes'us 
much in the same way, as if one stopped another in the 
street, and fell at once into conversation with him, without 
shaking of hands, a smile, an inquiry after the person's 
health who is addressed, a passing good-morrow, or even a 
civil nod. When a man wishes to assume a magisterial 
air, to write in the imperative or minatory mood, he may 
waive all forms of address. But between friends, it is 
one of the indispensable bonds of connexion, and furnishes 
one of the strongest ties (however slight it may appear) to 
lasting attachment. 

Not to trench further upon the confined limits to which 
our lucubrations are restricted, we must make an end of 
these prefatory remarks and come to the point. 

In looking through the Index to the first series of the 
Curiosities of Literature, we remarked a section on Pre- 
faces ; and began to think we had chanced upon a topic 
already exhausted by the learned research and ingenious 
criticism of the elder D'Israeli. But a reference to the 
paragraph in question speedily satisfied us how much more 
had been left for subsequent essayists ; that the liberal an- 
tiquary had by no means employed a tithe of his researches, 
had merely indicated a point or two, leaving the multifari- 
ous instances for future inquirers to accumulate and dis- 
pose. Of what he has written, however (a page or two 
only), we readily avail ourselves, for who has more justly 
gained the title of the Literary Antiquary than D'Israeli, 
and from whose books can our later critics gain a better 
insight into many varieties of letters and the profession ot 
authorship, than from the fragmentary note-books of the 
same author ? 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 99 

Prefaces, it appears, are no modern inventions. Cicero 
is said to have kept a volume by him fitted for all sorts of 
works ; a species of assorted common-places cast into the 
form of an address. Prefaces then, as more lately, even 
down to the time of Johnson, were written to order, by 
authors who wrote only that part of the published book. 
Some introductions, too, were and have been written which 
might have answered equally well for any productions of a 
similar cast. This is well-known of Sallust's introductory 
paragraphs to his two histories. And, if we are not mis- 
taken in the recollection. Clarendon's preface to his history 
of the Rebellion might with slight alteration have answered 
for a narrative of any popular revolution. Sir W. Raleigh's 
preface might be prefixed to any universal history ; and 
Hooker's, to any treatise on Ecclesiastical polity, so far as 
the bearing of the introduction, on the work that follows, is 
concerned. All of these are, in themselves, intrinsically 
noble, but with little individuality or close connection with 
the particular subject. 

A friend reminds us that the same criticism may be ap- 
plied to Voltaire's preface to his history of Charles XII. ; 
we had forgotten this instance, but adopt it on the testimony 
of a witness so likely to be correct. Many other examples, 
we dare say, might be produced ; but a few are sufficient. 

If we were to fix an era when prefaces might be said to 
be emphatically in fashion in England, we should be 
obliged to include a. couple of centuries at least ; from the 
beginning of the reign of James t. to the end of the reign 
of George III. We might commence nearly a century 
earlier, but restrict ourselves within pretty well defined 
limits. A book published at that period, whatever its cha- 
racter or pretensions, without a preface of some description, 



100 LITERARY STUDIES. 

or a dedication of some kind, might have been regarded as 
an anomaly. With this necessary requisition, it was not 
expected, however, that all prefaces and all dedications 
should be cast into the same mould. It was enough, if the 
usual form and style of the one, and the customary spirit 
and length of the others, were observed. It is curious, 
therefore, to remark the variety of styles, and the differ- 
ence of manner. Flattery wore a number of elegant dis- 
guises, from the magnificent hyperbole of Bacon to the 
easy grace of Steele. Criticism was one thing in the hands 
of the harmonious Dryden, and quite another thing in the 
pages of the brilliant and sententious Pope. 

Perhaps the finest preface in the language is Pope's 
Preface to his Miscellanies, most of them written before 
the age of twenty-five. And, for our own parts, we re- 
gard the dedication of the Lover, by Steele, as the noblest 
dedication we ever read. As the volume is very scarce, 
we quote the entire epistle, as a master-piece of its kind : 

" To Sir Samuel Garth, M.D. 

" Sir : — As soon as I thought of making the Lover a 
present to one of my friends, I resolved, without further 
distracting my choice, to send it To the hest-natured Man. 
You are so universally known for this character, that an 
epistle so directed would find its way to you without your 
name, and I believe nobody but you yourself would deliver 
such a superscription to any other person. 

" This propensity is the nearest akin to love ; and good 
nature is the worthiest affection of the mind, as love is the 
noblest passion of it ; while the latter is wholly employed 
in endeavoring to make happy one single object, the other 
diffuses its benevolence to all the world. 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 



101 



"As this is your natural bent, I cannot but congratulate 
you on the singular felicity, that your profession is so 
agreeable to your temper. For wiiat condition is more de- 
sirable, than a constant impulse to relieve the distressed, 
and a capacity to administer that relief? When the sick 
man hangs his eye on that of Us physician, how pleasing must 
it he to speak comfort to his anguish, to raise in him the first 
motions of hope, to lead him into a persuasion that he shall 
return to the company of his friends, the care of his family, 
and all the blessings of being. 

" The manner in which you practise this heavenly facul- 
ty of aiding human life, is according to the liberality of 
science, and demonstrates that your heart is more set upon 
doing good than growing rich. 

" The pitiful artifices which empirics are guilty of, to 
draw cash out of valetudinarians, are the abhorrence of 
your generous mind, and it is as common with Garth to sup- 
ply indigent patients with money for food, as to receive it from 
wealthy ones for j^hysic. How much more amiable, Sir, 
would the generosity which is already applauded by all 
who know you, appear to those whose gratitude you every 
day refuse, if they knew that you resist their presents lest 
you should supply those whose wants you know, by taking 
from those with whose necessities you are unacquainted ? 

" The families you frequent receive you as their friend 
and well-wisher, whose concern, in their behalf, is as great 
as that of those who are related to them by the ties of 
blood, and the sanctions of affinity. This tenderness inter- 
rupts the satisfactions of conversations, to which you are 
so happily turned, but we forgive you that our mirth is often 
insipid to you, while you sit absent to what passes ajnongst us, 
from your care of such as languish in sickness. We are 



102 LITERARY STUDIES. 

sensible their distresses, instead of being removed by corn- 
pan;; , return more strongly to your imagination by compa- 
rison of their condition to the jollities of health. 

" But I forget I am writing a dedication ; and, in an ad- 
dress of this kind, it is more usual to celebrate men's great 
talents, than those virtues to which such talents should be 
subservient ; yet, where the bent of a man's spirit is taken 
up in the application of his whole force to serve the world 
in his profession, it would be frivolous not to entertain him 
rather with thanks for what he is, than applause for what 
he is capable of being. Besides, Sir, there is no room for 
saying anything to you, as you are a man of wit, and a 
great poet ; all that can be spoken in the celebration of 
such faculties has been incomparably said by yourself to 
others, or by others to you. You have never been excelled 
in this kind but by those who have written in praise of you : 
I will not pretend to be your rival, even with such an ad- 
vantage over you, but assuring you, in Mr. Codrington's* 
words, that I do not know whether my admiration or love 
is greater, 

" I remain. Sir, your most faithful friend, and most 
obliged Jiumble servant, 

" Richard Steele." 

If this be not writing from and to the heart, we know 
not what is. This was one of those rare occasions where 
both writer and patron have a generous spirit, and where 
praise can be given without servility, and received without 
loss of self-respect. 

* Thou hast no faults, 01 I no f\iults can spy ; 
Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I. 

Codrington to Dr. Garth, before the Dispensary. 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 103 

To return to the earliest writers of dedication in English 
(we have forsaken regularity of method in the present 
paper, but shall endeavor to regain it) ; Bacon's dedication 
of the Advancement, to the King, is a piece of keen satire 
and magnificent eulogium united, forming a composition of 
wonderful ingenuity and eloquence. Dryden's dedications 
are equally splendid and fulsome. We cannot help admir- 
ing his rich musical style, and copious matter (a Field of 
Cloth of Gold), but at the same time we lose all confidence 
in the sincerity of a man who could address the most insipid 
peer of the realm in the same glowing colors with which 
he would depict the features of the prince of poets. His 
critical prefaces are even finer yet, and may be justly 
styled JEsthetical treatises. Mere prefaces, in a confined 
sense, Dryden did not write, but rather rich, copious, cri- 
tical essays. On his own premises, and with his artificial 
education, Dryden reasoned vigorously, and illustrated his 
views with beauty, and even splendor of ornament. He 
has left on record the finest portraits of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, Shakspeare, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher. 
But Dryden is not without defects. He is tediously minute 
in criticising his own dramatic pieces, and displays too 
much of erudition on points of comparatively trifling im- 
portance. 

Steele's dedication to the Lover we have extracted. 
The dedications of the volumes of the Tattler are hardly 
less fine. They are much shorter, and less personal, but 
graceful and natural. In the dedication of the first volume, 
to Mr. Maynwaring, he thus admirably sets forth (what 
should have been placed in a preface, for it relates to the 
work itself, and not to its patron) the sum of his endea- 
vors, and which might be assumed, with the greatest pro- 



104 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



priety, by every work of the kind : — " The general pur- 
pose of this paper is to expose the false arts of life, to 
pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and 
to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our dis- 
course, and our behavior." In the dedication to the second 
volume, to Mr. Ed. Wortley Montague, he thus delicately 
compliments his benevolent generosity : — " I know not 
how to say a more affectionate thing to you, than to wish 
that you may be always what you are ; and that you may 
ever think, as I know you now do, that you have a much 
larger fortune than you want." The third volume opens 
with a perfect specimen of amenity and courteous elo- 
quence. It is addressed to Lord Cowper, in Steele's pro- 
per person, and includes a brilliant portrait of the great 
statesman and forensic orator. The concluding volume 
of the series is presented to Lord Halifax, the Mecsenas of 
the day, to whom every author of eminence offered the 
first fruits of his genius, and dedicated the choicest pro- 
ductions of his maturer taste. He was the nobleman, am- 
bitious of literary fame, who was " Fed with soft dedica- 
tions all day long," by Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift (who 
afterwards changed his tune, upon being neglected by 
him), &c. 

Addison's dedications have not so genial a tone as his 
fellow-laborer's ; yet they are unquestionably impressed 
with the habitual elegance of his style. He was fortu- 
nate in his patrons, the first four volumes of the Spectator 
being addressed to Somers, Halifax, Boyle, and Marl- 
borough. 

Pope's preface, we remarked, was, perhaps, the finest 
in the language. It is curt, polished, full of sense, with a 
dash of caustic irony and refined sentiment, curiously 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 105 

blended, and written as with a pen of steel. The same 
antithetical manner, precision of thought, and brilliancy 
of expression, that made the epigrammatic verse of the 
Wasp of Twit'nam prevail in his prose ; and in none of 
his prose do they appear in such a vivid light as in the 
preface to his Miscellaneous Works. 

We can only refrain from transcribing passage after 
passage by the apprehension of exceeding our prescribed 
space, and by the reflection that, as the works of Pope are 
so universally accessible, quotation' would only tend to 
encourage indolence in the reader, who can turn to it 
readily. 

Mr. Chalmers speaks of Johnson's dedications as "models 
of courtly address ;" they might have been such in the 
reign of the dull Dutchman, George II., but now-a-days 
they read a little too much like the pompous flourishes of 
the ancient regime. Goldsmith's dedications are much 
briefer, but more to the point, and more graceful. In an 
introduction, despite of the triptology of his style, Johnson 
was at home. And his style was admirably suitable to 
occasions of moment and themes of weight and importance. 
From the sonorous music of his best writing, we can 
readily admit that Temple (as has been asserted) was one 
of the models of Johnson's prose. In point and vigor, 
Johnson was his superior, but he wants Temple's simplicity 
and ease. Johnson used to say, there were two things he 
knew he could do well — state what a work ought to con- 
tain, and then relate the reasons or deduce the causes why 
the writer had failed in executing what he proposed. The 
first of these talents he possessed to perfection, as we see 
by his prefaces, most of which were written to order, and 
are often vastly superior to the book they introduced to the 

VOL. II. 6 



106 LITERARY STUDIES. 

reader. The preface to Rolt's Dictionary of Trade and 
Commerce is a striking instance. Johnson had never seen 
the book, but was asked to give a preface, which he wrote 
accordingly. He said he knew what such a book ought 
to contain, and marked out its expected contents. Accord- 
ing to Chalmers, the production was almost worthless. 
When a bookseller's drudge, the noble old moralist indited 
many an introduction to books of travel and science, school 
treatises, translations, catalogues. Only a few of these 
have been preserved in the correct editions of his works. 

Johnson possessed great faculties of method and classifi- 
cation. He had clear and strong, though not fine and 
subtle powers of analysis and classification. Hence re- 
sulted this talent of telling what a book should contain. In 
a preface it was not his business to go farther. But in his 
lives and extended criticisms he was equally happy in as- 
signing the causes of ill success and of certain failure, on 
particular grounds. Goldsmith's prefaces were less rigor- 
ous, less pointed, but more graceful and simply beautiful. 

After the dissolution of the Johnsonian school of writers, 
we read few classical prefaces save by pupils of the old 
classical school. Irving is the last of these. Scott ex- 
pended considerable pains on his introductions, and pro- 
posed rewriting all of his prefaces to the Waverley novels, 
just before his death. Much of Sir Walter's pleasantest 
writing occurs in these rambling preludes to his animating 
narratives. Bulwer's prefaces are distorted by the nar- 
rowest egotism and unbounded assumption, yet they are 
such as a man of his great talents alone would write. The 
poets have written the best prose and the best prefaces, 
too ; such are (wide apart to be sure) Hunt's lively gossip- 
ing introductions, and Wordsworth's elevated lectures, for 



ON PREFACES AND DEDICATIONS. 107 

such they amount to, on the dignity and nobleness of his 
art. 

We trust the day is coming when writers will return to 
the composition of prefaces, if only to preserve an historical 
interest in their works. Much of the interest of the old 
prefaces is dei'ived from the names at the top and bottom 
of the page, with the date of publication. Prefaces thus 
afford authentic materials for literary history, and if care- 
fully executed, for literary criticism. They preserve, too, 
a regard for the good and well-tested standard forms of 
writing, and in themselves require a species of talent that 
should not be neglected. To declare his principal aims, 
and explain his chief intentions, thereby giving the reader 
a proper clue to the argument of the whole work, with a 
candid and open avowal of deficiencies, is the proper busi- 
ness of a preface, and of a writer of books. To address 
his friend, or at least the reader, with cordiality or respect, 
in accordance with the spirit of the production ; to bespeak 
his favorable notice, or seek to avoid unmerited neglect, is 
the province of the dedication. To accomplish these ends, 
a recurrence to standard models cannot be hurtful, since 
there is something of a formal, and, as it were, of artistical 
etiquette in the matter, and which is not to be lost sight of. 
The author, who is also a gentleman, and it is the effect of 
letters to make him such, will certainly endeavor to carry 
himself with as genteel an air on paper as in company. In 
every place, he will observe the universal laws of polite 
regard and the local observances of conventional decorum. 
One of these is to write a preface to every book he pub- 
lishes, which should also be accompanied by a dedication. 
In the first, he addresses the public ; and in the last he 
acknowledges the claims of private affection or personal 



108 LITERARY STUDIES. 

gratitude, of admiration for talents or virtue in one of the 
stars of contemporary renown, or of worth and excellence 
in obscure genius and unobtrusive merit. The preface 
pleads, apologizes, defends or attacks : the dedication con- 
ciliates and compliments. Let an author be friendless and 
humble, he still can appeal to the " gentle " reader for 
sympathy and confidence. 

To the lovers of literature, and especially of its curiosi- 
ties and antiquities, and we hope among the readers of the 
Miscellany to number many such, we dedicate this petit 
morgeau of criticism and research. 

Note. — The first paper of the first volume may serve for a gene- 
ral preface to this collection : at least in default of a more elaborate 
introduction. 



XITI 



RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY 



We believe Dr. Johnson was the first critic to complain 
of tlie penury of English biography. It was a com- 
plaint that savored more of hastiness and ignorance than 
the Doctor's contemporary admirers would have been wil- 
ling to allow any reviewer to discover in him, but still it 
was such ; and now that every pretender to criticism 
makes it a point to beard the rough but manly old dogma- 
list, we may allow ourselves the privilege of picking an 
additional flaw in his critical reputation (almost worn out 
by repeated attacks). It is certain, for his undoubted 
vigor and ability, no writer of eminence ever made so many 
and such gross critical blunders as Doctor Johnson. 
On real life and domestic morals ; the character and man- 
ners of the Londoners ; the hypocrisies of men of the 
world ; the thin-skinned sentimentalities of pretenders to 
sentiment and criticism, he exhibited an acuteness of ob- 
servation, a comprehensivncss of judgment, and pungency 
of satire, that have never been surpassed. But in the field 
of literary criticism, requiring finer tact and a nicer per- 
ception, the grossness of his senses, no less than the obtusc- 
ness of his taste, rendered him unfit, physically and intel- 
lectually, to judge of poets and men of fancy. 



110 LITERARY STUDIES. 

In the rich territory of old English literature, there is 
not, perhaps, a more fruitful province than that of biogra- 
phy, not only in the classic form of lives, but also memoirs, 
diaries and autobiography. It is true the lives most gene- 
rally read at present, were written either during the life- 
time or since the death of Johnson ; as in the former period 
the classic lives of Goldsmith and Johnson, and the me- 
moirs of Cumberland, and from that period to the present 
day, among heaps of wretched compilations, we must dis- 
tinguish the first book of the kind in the world, Boswell's 
Johnson, the learned autobiography of Gibbon, the simple 
yet fascinating lives of Hume and Franklin, honest self- 
painters ; the classic compendiums of Southey, the lives 
of Burns by Currie and Lockhart, and the minor sketches 
of Irving. The latest permanent work of this class, is the 
Memoirs of Leigh Hunt. And yet by far the richest 
treasures of English biography are to be found among the 
antiquarian volumes of the old English library. The best 
of these form a choice list ; classic to this day. There 
are the lives, by Burnet, of Hale and Rochester ; the aus- 
tere, incorruptible judge and pure citizen, and the lively, 
volatile wit and libertine subsiding into a sober, earnest 
Christian. Walton's lives are too well known to dilate 
upon the heroes of them at present, yet what a noble com- 
pany of poets, divines and Christian gentlemen form the 
subjects of his volumes ; Hooker, and Wotton, and Donne, 
and Herbert, and Sanderson. Zouch's life of Walton 
himself is fit to be included as the humble companion of 
these. Then we have North's life of Lord Guilford, full 
of lively personal strokes and characters of the great law- 
yers of the time of Charles II. and James II. Fenton's 
lives of Milton and Waller — Fell's Hammond, the Fene- 



RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY. Ill 

Ion of the royalist divines, and favorite chaplain of Charles 
I., sharing his imprisonment and dangers. Among the 
latest of the older lives, Doddridge's Life of Colonel Gar- 
diner, of which we shall say more before we conclude. 

The French have the reputation of being the best me- 
moir writers in the world, yet their most courtly wits have 
not surpassed Grammont (himself a Frenchman), in his 
pictures of the royal licentiousness of the age of Charles 
II., and, on the spot, Pepys and Evelyn. The memoirs of 
Colonel Hutchinson by his wife, and of Venetia Digby, 
the beauty of her day, and the popular toast, despite her 
doubtful reputation, by the quaint fantast Sir Kenelm Dig. 
by, are at least a fair match for Bassompiere and Roche- 
foucauld. And then, as repositories of facts and personal 
circumstances nowhere else to be learned, we have the 
elaborate histories of Wood and Fuller, Spence's and Au- 
brey's anecdotes, and the letter writers, from old Howell 
himself to Pope and his friends. If such a list looks like 
" penury," we should like to learn the comparative scale 
by which " wealth" is to be adjudged. 

A fair proportion of the old lives are those of good 
Christians without pretence, and fine scholars without pre- 
sumption. Most of them, too, have an additional value as 
models for conduct : Rochester and Gardiner being the 
sole instances of " men that need repentance," and they 
both converted in the heyday of the vicious career in which 
they were embarked. 

So much by way of preface — a long introduction to a 
brief article. We have selected this topic to point out the 
prevalent defects, in almost every work of the kind ; de- 
fects, too, springing from the best of motives, and more 
easily discovered than corrected. In the best of the old 



112 LITERARY STUDIES. 

lives we find this ever-recurring defect : a desire to paint 
in the hero of biography, a perfect man ; a tendency to ex- 
aggerate individual and particular merits, by the force of 
contrast with inferior traits in much inferior characters. 
The writers of lives, in all times, liave been too sparing of 
the shade in their portraits. A profusion of light falling 
upon the admirable virtues, allows no room for the exhibi- 
tion of defects. Every trait is heightened ; every charac- 
teristic marked with an emphasis, seldom found in nature. 
The subjects of biography, like the heroes of novels, are 
too often, 

*' Faultless monsters whom the world ne'er saw." 

This disgusts the thoughtful reader, whether young or 
old J for the youthful student soon finds these pictures dis- 
proved in real life, and the sage knows their unreality 
while he is perusing the page. In the older lives, in all 
of those to which we have referred, a saving clause may 
be inserted, that the subjects of the writers were all of them 
men of tliat eminence that either extravagant praise or ex- 
cessive censure soon corrected itself. For one would re- 
port differently of their lives and actions from another, and 
hence a balance might easily be struck between them. 
And besides, in extenuation, we may ofter the best apology 
for the biographer, that his hero was often a character so 
fascinating, viewed as a whole, that it was very excusable 
to overlook minor errors and petty defects. All of Wal- 
ton's characters, for instance, inevitably seduce a writer 
into encomium, when he should bo writing impartially ; 
and it is pleasanter, as well as easier, to pen an eulogy 
rather than a life. This was the fault that Johnson ac- 



RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY. 113 

cuses Sprat of falling into,* and a fault more glaring in 
Mrs. Hutchinson's book than in most of the old lives, and 
less justifiable, since she wrote the history of her time, as 
well as the life of her husband. 

Doddridge's Life of Colonel Gardiner is a singular spe- 
cimen of this class of books, of an inferior literary value, 
compared with the rest, but still excellent. As an exam- 
ple of its class, we will give the reader a summary digest 
of its contents. The author, a nonconformist divine of 
considerable reputation, became in the career of his min- 
istry professionally acquainted and intimately connected 
with the subject of his narrative, who was a royalist officer, 
a colonel of dragoons. Gardiner revealed to him from 
time to time the most eventful passages of his life, over 
which hung, in his devout imagination, a mystical halo, 
radiant with celestial beauty. He was born at a remark- 
able period, 1688, the year of the English Revolution, and 
expired, at a no less stirring time, on the battle field at 
Preston Pans, when the partisans of the house of Stuart 
" were out" for the second time, in '45. 

This distinguished officer and Christian was the son of 
an officer of good family, who fought the battles of his 
country on the continent, during the reign of William 
III., and of Anne, after him, and in which Marlborough 
was the presiding military genius of Great Britain. A 
military school, with Marlborough and Eugene at its head, 
could not fail of turning out able commanders ; and of 
these Gardiner was one of the chief. Brave, to a daring 
rashness, he had all the splendid qualities, and but too 
many of the striking vices, of the soldier. Like the ma- 

* Life of Cowley. 
G* 



114 LITERARY STUDIES. 

jority of celebrated men, who have evinced in later life 
the influence of early education, Gardiner was fortunate in 
having a most estimable mother, to whose guidance and 
example he was wont to attribute the uncorrupted parts of 
his character and temper. Yet ill company, and that of 
a military cast, was allowed at one period to master the 
original good qualities of his nature, and taint the purity 
of his soul with the tarnish of vice. He early fell into 
gross living, swore dreadfully, cherished a malignant spirit 
of revenge — (before the age of twenty-one he had fought 
iliree duels) — and exhibited even a ferocity, that became 
sobered down into manly valor and Christian resolution ; 
so much so, that in middle life he used to say, " I fear sin- 
ning more than fighting !" In every engagement he 
gained applause for skill, no less than courage, since he 
scientifically practised his profession. 

Though often remonstrated with, and even sometimes 
alarming by his horrid imprecations the better portion of 
his comrades, he still went on in his evil ways, until the 
occurrence of what he speaks of as a vision from heaven, 
and would have regarded as a miracle. To fill up the 
interval, it seems, one morning, previous to the hour ap- 
pointed for meeting certain of his associates at a dinner 
party, he took up one of the religious works with a quaint 
title, published at the era of the Protectorate, when the 
Puritans were in fashion and in power. He read to ridi- 
cule, but was suddenly overpowered by a conviction, aw- 
fully indescribable, of his wickedness, which threw him 
into a sort of vision or trance, during which he imagined, 
as we construe the declaration, that he saw a living repre- 
sentation of his crucified Master, and heard the divine 
voice, in tones of entreaty and to this purport, " Have I not 



RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY. 115 

suffered this for thee ?" The dream, the fancied vision, or 
what you will call it, struck him with profound dismay, 
and awakened his soul to the consideration of its state. 

From this period he was another man : strictly pious, 
regular in every habit, loving solitude and religious con- 
versation and prayer. He became a disciplinarian of the 
noblest sort, the moral teacher as well as commander of 
his men. He now was used to recount the wonderful 
providences (so he termed them) of his life, of his extra- 
ordinary escapes, of being wounded in the mouth just after 
uttering a horrid oath, a punishment closely consequent on 
his offence : of striking personal deliverance from immi- 
nent dangers. A good man and true Christian hero, after 
Steele's model, a saint militant, he yet was not without a 
besetting defect — and that was the excitability of his reli- 
gious imagination. He dreamed a dream of following 
across the part of a field his Lord and Saviour : he made 
a prediction of the death of the king, which turned out cor- 
rect. Everything with him was miraculous, and a little 
heightened by (unconscious) extravagance. No doubt he 
was sincere : the only question is, if he was not a self, 
deceiver. A sudden conversion, an opportune deliverance, 
is sufficient to turn the head of the wisest man. We think 
that, like Donne's extraordinary vision of his wife and dear 
child, his vision was the waking dream of an imaginative 
mind. 

Whether imagination or reality presided on these occa- 
sions, still he remained consistent and firm : unlike Volney 
and those cowardly blasphemers, who take back in a mo- 
ment of security what they uttered in the hour of danger. 
Ever these circumstances remained before him, a cloud 
by day and a pillar of fire by night, to guide his faltering 



116 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



steps. A lofty confidence elevated the hopes and daily 
walk of the happy man, who considered himself blessed in 
beholding the countenance of his Saviour and friend. 

With the mass, the love for the miraculous, for prophe- 
cy, for mysteries, is more a false state, a mere religious 
stimulant, and not the healthy action of a vigorous soul. 
But it was not so with him. 

Gardiner died the death of a soldier and a Christian, on 
the field of battle, and in the arms of victory, an officer of 
the generous strain of Gustavus Adolphus, and like that 
lion of the North, high-toned, exact, judicious, and sin- 
cere, he fought the good fight of faith, and left behind him 
a sweet remembrance in the hearts of all, as a brave and 
accomplished officer, a steadfast Christian, a good man, 
and a courteous gentleman — Requiescat in pace. 

To return to the general subject : for modern religious 
biography, we entertain no great favor. The writers of it 
are in most cases ill-fitted for their task, and indeed quite 
unpractised in composition. Southey's Wesley (a philo- 
sophical history of Methodism) and Heber's life of Taylor 
are the only two classic works in this department, of the 
nineteenth century, we can, at present, recall. The lives 
of most missionaries are more interesting for the statistical 
information they contain than for aught else. Missionaries 
should be good travel writers, yet we find only a single 
Borrow among them. The subjects of religious biography 
are in most cases good enough people, but quite unworthy 
of being embalmed for the admiration of posterity. The 
embalming is thrown away, for they never reach posterity. 
An eminently great and good man, an exemplar of faith 
and charity, should never be allowed to pass out of the 
memories of men, cannot be forgotten ; he will live in 



RELIGIOUS BIOGRAPHY. 117 

tradition, if not in printed books. But many good, humble 
Christians die daily, whom it is by no means essential to 
write the lives of; whom it rather hurts the interests of 
religion, and certainly of literature (considered purely as 
such) to make unduly prominent. The facts of their lives 
are few ; they have done little to affect the rest of man- 
kind ; their greatest victories (silent and obscure) have 
been over themselves (the noblest of victories), and their 
profoundest discoveries have been of the wickedness of 
their own hearts. These facts, to the individual of all 
others the most important, still have little interest for the 
world at large. The story of the Christian's life is told 
in two words, Repentance and Love. Now, unless striking 
instances occur, or curious details are presented, a reli- 
gious life, of all others, presents very little to interest even 
the most sympathizing (intelligent) reader. 

The injury done to literature by a flood of religious 
lives is clear: standard works of the highest character 
are neglected for a new biography of the least value ; 
corruptions of style become frequent, and essentially im- 
pair the idiomatic graces of our tongue. Inferior models 
of excellence are held up, to the exclusion of the most 
excellent ; cant is prevalent ; at first unconscious, it be- 
comes at last confirmed and hypocritical. 

Let no serious reader think we underrate the humblest 
virtues of the patient Christian. We reverence piety in 
the garb of the beggar ; we believe it to add a crowning 
glory to the wisest head. Yet we protest against an indis- 
criminate record of the private lives of Christians, who 
have not some other claim on the universal attention of 
mankind. Want of literature is not, however, the only 
want of many, both of the subjects and authors, of reli- 



118 LITERARY STUDIES. 

gious lives ; many have wanted real humility, many have 
in a secret self-praise elevated themselves above the rest 
of mankind, and thought a publication of their conversion 
and religious experience, necessary for the salvation of 
the world. With such we can pretend to have no pa- 
tience, since we believe that they are self-deluded after all, 
and rather to be pitied than admired. 

The sincere Christian need not fear oblivion. Unknown 
to men, he is not forgotten by his heavenly Father ; and if 
his life is not told in the perishable books of human au- 
thors, his name is nevertheless registered in the Book of 
Life. 



XIV. 



TITLES 



We Americans have been ridiculed for our extravagant 
admiration of titles, with more of justice than most of us 
are at all willing to allow. Notwithstanding our republi- 
can spirit, in government and political rights, we still, as a 
nation, entertain a vast respect for forms, ceremonies, 
honors, grave respects. 

The most laughable part of the matter, too, is found in 
the fact, that a people characteristically pacific, both from 
inclination and policy, should affect such a violent attach- 
ment for military titles, with all the pomp and insignia of 
war. Every petty mechanic may become, and often is, a 
captain or major. Your host at the tavern is colonel : the 
blacksmith of the village, perhaps a general — sometimes a 
Greene. The persons holding these offices are frequently 
among the mildest of men, probably so timid as to run, in 
actual conflict, at the report of artillery. Our city and 
country militia would hardly stand before a disciplined 
army — save and excepting always, in a defensive national 
war, and then cowards would be converted into heroes. 
We do not speak of such an emergency, but refer to the 
soldierly character of our people. A mere soldier of for- 
tune fights equally well, or ill, everywhere, under every 



120 LITERARY STUDIES. 

government ; but Americans are soldiers from necessity, 
and at home. There they would act like brave men, as 
they always have done. 

English writers have noticed this mock heroic trait in 
our people ; but they have not remarked that the admira- 
tion for titles is as common in the line of civil as of mili- 
tary life. We are equally open to satire on that side, also. 
A judge of a county court is with us a great man ; and, 
indeed, a judgeship is generally the mark of a country 
gentleman's ambition. One of our Presidents, after filling 
the highest office, became the justice of one of the Virginia 
county courts. We trust the justices, at the present day, 
in our land, are quite unlike the fox-hunting squires of 
Fielding's time, illiterate and coarse-minded. That race 
is well nigh extinct; we have known judges of the most 
opposite character to this ;* yet we fear a spice of the old 
leaven remains, in the shape of a bullying, cowardly, 
tyrannical, fawning servitor of the law. 

What a luminary is an honorable Senator ! Individually, 
in remote places, he merges the reputation of an entire dis- 
trict in his own person. We once knew a specimen of this 
race, who came nearer to our idea of an universal genius 
(according to the received idea of that character) than any- 
one we ever met. This Crichton was, a few years ago, 
and bearing all these blushing honors, at one and the same 
time, Major- General and State Senator, a speculative and 
thriving practical farmer and gardener, an expert mechanic, 

*One noble instance we could point to, if it did not appear boast- 
ful, of a just judge and most able lawyer combined : who might have 
sat on the same bench with a Hale or a Holt, and who would have 
reflected as much honor as he gained from the association. Such 
men are most rare. 



TITLES. 121 

a man of the world, a lively talker, a capital mimic, and 
parlor vocalist. He was, to conclude, a pleasant and hos- 
pitable host, and a kind neighbor, to boot. To be sure, he 
was no scholar, could hardly write an ordinary letter, nor 
speak for five minutes, with precision, on any political 
question. Of law he knew almost nothing, though a mem- 
ber of the Court of Errors (a common case) and of political 
philosophy he knew less. How, then, did he arrive at such 
distinction — what gifts had he ? a bright eye, a good voice, 
a pleasant address. He was, and is, a shrewd fellow, a 
good lobby member, and, as a partizan, it was neck or 
nothing with him. Safely do we sketch this portrait — for 
not only is the original quite unknown to the public, but 
with his innate vanity it will remain as unknown to, and 
unrecognized by, himself; and besides, in most particulars, 
the character is not that of an individual so much as of a 
very large class, whose name is legion : not the Legion of 
Honor. 

The thirst for office and titular distinctions is not, how- 
ever, confined to the country. At a charter election, what 
a rivalry for the petty offices of the wards. Irving, in his 
satire on the Dutch burgomaster and schepens, has painted 
with exact fidelity, our contemporary aldermen and their as- 
sistants. These are the smallest in general of our little great 
men. What a turkey-cock is a true alderman of this class ! 
not the official performing his regular duties, and carefully 
watching the interests and comfort of his ward, but the 
mere beef-eater, the pursy, swelling, pompous ignoramus. 
Elected by those who have some design upon his pockets, 
or at least his patronage ; consorting with his kind, and 
thinking with them, he has nothing to do but to eat rich 
dinners (at the almshouse for sick and 'poor) and talk in an 



122 LITEEARY STUDIES. 

imperative style, the autocrat of the side-walks, of the 
church where he attends, for a comfortable nap of a sum- 
mer's afternoon, of the tradesmen he deigns to employ, and 
of the barber's shop, where he is first shaved in the morn- 
ing, and reads all the papers through, keeping a shop full 
waiting, while he toils through the advertisements. The 
terror of beggars and of petty criminals, hard-hearted, a 
usurer, a rigorous landlord, without any bowels of mercy. 

And the constable — what a hateful retailer of so-called 
justice, the most farcical burlesque upon the primal virtue 
existing, were he not one of the most contemptible speci- 
mens of cunning, treachery, corruption and insolence. 
We speak of the class. He is better styled (as in Swift 
and Rabelais) the catchpole (would he might be served 
like the shrewd gentleman in the latter author), and his 
office ranks the very lowest in point of social morality, and 
in the political scale. He is the companion of the vilest : 
often one of the number, temporarily reprieved as a sort of 
state's evidence : having to assume an air of honesty, or to 
connive at profitable roguery, as may be most expedient or 
most profitable. The police increase crime, by fostering 
the early indications of depravity ; by suspicion, that often 
verifies its own prophecy ; and by the rigorous punishment 
of small otlbnces, always productive of ill etiects, and only 
tending to stimulate the taste lor crime, and exciting a 
spirit of revenge. They live by it, and keep up the de- 
mand for their services, like the rat-catcher in one of Han- 
nah IMore's tales, who left, at every house where he took 
any of those vermin, at least one pair, to preserve the 
race. 

We forgot — when we spoke of the policemen as holding 
the lowest office : there is one still viler, yet more sublime 



TITLES. 123 

in its hatefulness, its ugliness — one, no honest, no humane, 
no Christian man, can hold : one, that in some countries is 
so prescribed (odious in all), that the executioner is oblijjed 
to flee when he has executed his office ; and in Switzer- 
land, so disgraceful is it esteemed, that it is forced, heredi- 
tarily, on one family, who are outlawed, in effect, if not 
in fact : an office that public opinion, in our country, justly 
revolts at from its connexion with the most frightful of all 
punishments : the office of the Hangman. 

To leave such reflections as these, which are somewhat 
out of place here in a gossiping way, a strong objection to 
the employment of titles is tiie very inadequate character 
they bear. The Right Honorable gentleman may be, and 
often ought to be, called, a most dishonorable traitor. 
The Reverend brother is not always deserving of reverence, 
nor the learned advocate always a model of legal attain- 
ments. These titles and epithets arc, for the most part, 
unmeaning, and often savor of downright irony. By a 
title is often implied much more than is actually meant ; 
and like the bishop's lawn, the marshal's truncheon, and 
the judge's ermine, are considered the correlatives of 
piety, courage, and incorruptible integrity. Yet they 
aflbrd, in general, merely the substitutes for those qualities. 
Titles are worshipped by " the great vulgar and the small," 
who are in the habit of taking the name for the thing. 
To carry any weight with it, a title should infer some par- 
ticular merit, as the valor of a hero, or the wisdom of a 
counsellor. It should have the effect of a judicious epi- 
thet : sometimes a sublime description, as in the list of 
titles of the Saviour of mankind. It should serve as a 
designation. But what mean the titles of courts ? The 
" Grace," for instance, of a duke, or an archbishop ; or 



124 LITERARY STUDIES. 

the " Serenity " of a petty German prince. TJiey can be 
borne by good and bad men, indiscriminately. The true 
title must be earned ; the reward of merit is worthless, 
conferred as an act of favor. Artificial rank can be cre- 
ated. Nature only can form the true noblemen. Kings, 
we are told, can make or unmake, princes or lords, who 
may flourish or may fade ; 

" But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. 
When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 

Or, as Burns nobly sings : — 

" A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man 's aboon his might, 
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that." 

The noblest of titles, gentleman, not the artificial desig- 
nation, but the highest perfection of the manly character, 
cannot be created by letters patent. He must be born 
one, with a clear head, a warm heart, a noble will, and a 
gentle soul, invincible by fortune or circumstance. Thus 
averse, among his other genuine traits of manhood, is the 
true gentleman to all titular distinctions ; whose character 
Dekkar has finely drawn in a passage descriptive of the 
perfect character of the Divine word. 

The first of men that e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit. 
The first true gentleman that ever lived. 

The gentleman and the Christian knight are here one, 
as they always should be, united in the same character. 
Yet how unlike the ordinary notion of a spirited, showy 



TITLES. 125 

gallant, or overbearing aristocrat. Man, simply, is a 
sufficiently lofty title : a true man is the first of created 
beings. One of Shakspeare's characters nobly says : — 

" I tell thee, sirrah, I write man, to which title no age 
can bring thee." Neither, we may add, can any amount 
of wealth, degree of power, extent of ability, or elevation 
of office, if the heart and soul be wanting. 

The admiration of titles is something childish, and per- 
taining to a state of barbarism. The names and singular 
appellations borne by our native Indians, as well as by the 
savage tribes of other countries, illustrate this position, 
and are more worthy of attention, from their real meaning, 
than the family crests of civilized nations, at the present 
day, with all the trumpery of the Heralds' College. 

The facility of obtaining certain titles, from literary in- 
stitutions, and the ordinary academic degrees, has taken off 
the edge of novelty, and rendered them very common- 
place dignities. You find as many doctors of divinity as 
of medicine, and masters of arts abound almost as much as 
simple bachelors. In most instances, the titles are 
sadly misapplied. The teachers are learners, and the 
masters mere tyros. Almost as great a farce as college 
degrees — we speak it sub rosa — are the degrees of ma- 
sonry, the sublime degree of this, and the incomprehensi- 
ble degree of that. Nowadays, it does read absurdly, to 
be sure, in a Masonic Register, the names of honest, plain 
mechanics, as High-Priests, Grand Kings, Scribes and So- 
journers — Sir John Johnson of such an encampment. Right 
Worshipful of such a chapter, &c. One respectable sex- 
ton we find a High Priest, and the same office sustained 
by a noted political ballad singer. Speculative masonry, 
a benevolent and prudential system, in its origin, fitly and 



126 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



impressively exhibited by figures and symbols, affords, ab- 
stractedly and in practice, a wise and striking commentary 
on the Christian morality. But the multitude of signs, 
and the grave burlesque of (the reported) ceremonies, no 
less than the number, names and functions of several of 
the otHcers, have a tendency to degrade into ridicule what 
was most praiseworthy in its first intention. 

The violent contrast between the ordinary civil occupa- 
tions, and the elevated titles of the Masonic Dignitaries, 
is the cause of the comic elfect produced on hearing 
them recited. It is like making Sancho governor of Bara- 
taria, or dubbing poor Saltonstall Duke of Rigmarole. 
We are apt to look upon many titles as mere nicknames, 
intended by way of satirical jest upon pretension and affec- 
tation : often a serious joke, im})erceptible to the party 
most concerned in extinguishing it. To modern sceptics, 
the highliown style of addressing certain of the scholastic 
doctors was of this nature ; they were uniformly irrefrag- 
able, sublime, invincible, celestial. 

From a couple of papers in D'Israeli's collection of 
curiosities, we glean a few facts relative to the origin of 
certain Royal titles. " Illustrious " was never given save 
to those who merited the epithet, until the time of Con- 
stantine. The salutation *''Your Grace" was the first 
form of salutation. "Your Highness" came next into 
vogue. Henry VIII. is said to have been the first mon- 
arch who assumed it. The title " Majesty '"* was accorded 
(for the first time) by Francis I., to the same sovereign, 

• The reader will remember the bitter and sharp truth conveyed 
in the word Majesty, that, stript of its externals, it was but a Jest. 
Truly sang the old master : — " The shows of things are greater than 
themselves.*' 



TITLES. 



127 



in their celebrated interview on the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold, Selden thought a king of England should be styled 
Emperor. 

Our own countrymen are not the only people who are 
apt to be captivated by " the glory of a name." We have 
no orders of nobility [the Governor and Lieut-Governor 
of Massachusetts are the only public functionaries, in 
this country, provided hy law, with titles of Honor], and 
ought to be free from any charge of man-worship : hero- 
worship is another thing, and, always existing, should 
be perpetually cherished, in every community. The 
Spaniards formerly, and the Germans of the present day, 
are the nations most notorious for titled orders. We knew 
a German barber, in this city, who held his credentials 
and patent of Baron. French Count is almost a synonyme 
for unprincipled adventurer. The English entertain a 
deep and instinctive respect for their nobility. The Spanish 
Don is the proudest gentleman in Europe. 

These Spaniards, at one period during the glorious epoch 
of their history, from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella 
to the conclusion of that of Philip III., accumulated titles 
and modes of address, with points of etiquette and prece- 
dence, to such an extent, as to make it necessary to pub- 
lish, in a volume, the indispensable forms. The king of 
Spain, at that time, claimed as many titles as the Grand 
Seignor, whose address fills several pages. The natural 
stateliness of the Castilian would allow of no remission of 
dignity. He had, then, rather be robbed by a courteous 
footpad, who approached him with "all the honors" of the 
road, than be substantially aided by a rude despiser of 
ceremonies. Conversations must have been then less an 
interchange of sentiment or repartee than an elaborate 



128 LITERARY STUDIES. 

contest of external civilities. Incidentally, the chivalric 
soldier or bold navigator caught this passion for pomp and 
magnificence, from oriental discovery and conquest or 
colonization ; but an original basis was to be found in the 
national character, which was attracted by the noble, the 
splendid, and the grand : and which contained the ele- 
ments of all these. 

At this present epoch, the Germans appear to be the 
most smitten with a love of titles. It is, indeed, a passion. 
The great nation, which has produced the greatest literary 
artists of this century, the profoundest inquirers, the most 
learned scholars, still cherishes the baubles of office, and 
is pleased with the decoration of a ribbon or a medal. The 
most knowing have their foibles : there are " follies of the 
wise." The various classes of German titles are endless, 
and are not less remarkable than their singularity and 
application. There are titles of rank and of office — Rath, 
or Counsellor, is the commonest of these; and of this there 
are several grades. Of schoolmasters, there are many 
ranks — Rector, Sub-rector, Primus, Secundus, Tertius, 
Quartus, Quintus, &;c., &;c., &c. The Professor is ordi- 
narius and extra-ordinarius. Most of them are extraordi- 
nary enough, in all conscience. They profess every 
imaginable department of learning, even to Carlyle's and 
Jean Paul's Professors of Things in General. These 
Germans, too, even confer on the wife the husband's title, 
as Mrs. Court Counsellor, and the like. Goethe's mother, 
we learn from Bettine, was always styled Frau-Rath. 

Even one bearing no distinct title is always styled as 
Mr., in every instance — not as we employ the term, but 
Mr. Carpenter, Blacksmith, or Grocer, as the case may be. 
The Chinese are, perhaps, beyond all nations in their pas- 



TITLES. 129 

sion for honors, but we have not been able to gain any par- 
ticular details, from the general descriptions. The num- 
ber of mandarins is said to be immense, and their authority 
with tlie people almost unbounded. 

To turn to the philosophy of our subject, and leave curious 
facts. Modern titles, or rather modern aristocracy, a relic 
of feudalism, arose out of a military aristocracy. Origin- 
ally, they were the natural offspring of despotism and con- 
quest. They were intended to dazzle only to enslave, or 
to quote the gist of the whole matter, as it is admirably 
summed up in the Rights of Man (Vol. II., p. 86). The 
writer has been dilating upon the law of primogeniture, 
and thus proceeds to describe the character of the aristo- 
cracy growing out of it. The passage is remarkable for 
condensed thought and terse expression. " The nature 
and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law. 
It is a law against every law of nature, and nature herself 
calls for its destruction. Establish family justice, and 
aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogeni- 
ture, in a family of six, five are exposed. Aristocracy 
never has hut one child. The rest are begotten to be de- 
voured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and 
the natural parent prepares the unnatural repast. As 
everything which is out of nature in man affects, more or 
less, the interest of society, so does this. All the children 
which the aristocracy disowns [which are all except the 
oldest], are, in general, cast like orphans on a parish, to 
be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge. 
Unnecessary offices and places in governments and courts 
are created at the expense of the public to maintain them. 
With what kind of parental reflections can the father or 
mother contemplate their younger offspring ? By nature 

VOL. II. 7 



130 LITERARY STUDIES. 

they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but 
by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans. They are 
the flesh and blood of their parents in one line, and akin to 
them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents to their 
children, and children to their parents, relations to each 
other, and man to society, and to exterminate the monster 
aristocracy, root ana branch, the French constitution has 
destroyed the line of primogeniture. Here, then, lies the 
monster, and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its 
epitaph." 

Yet arbitrary and intolerant as Aristocracy is too apt 
to be and has generally been found — too often an over- 
bearing despotism, still we, sometimes, in our visions of 
the future, imagine a possible Aristocracy, composed 
purely of the wisest and most virtuous, those intended by 
Nature and Nature's God to direct their fellows and ani* 
mate their generous aspirations into manly action. This 
is, however, a state to be lioped for rather than expected 
with confidence. The Aristocracy of the present is too 
much the creature of circumstance to deserve our regard. 
It is not a self-dependent, bold and intelligent rule. It 
looks here at wealth, and inquires not if a man is worthy, 
but hoio much he is worth. The best men are they who 
are good for the greatest amount. Their maxim is, " wealth 
makes the man, the loant of it, the fellow." If the aris- 
tocracy of birth be considered, it looks not to the excellent 
qualities of a man's own parents or immediate family (as 
an ordinary thing), it rather investigates the antiquity of 
his house (the character of his immediate predecessors 
does not avail so much), and the long line of descent from 
a famous original. Its glory is retrospective and tradi- 
tional ; and noble as that may be as an incentive to indi- 



TITLES. 131 

vidual performance, it can notwithstanding never claim the 
force of a substitute for them. True democracy may, 
however, consist, and ought to be accompanied by true 
gentlemanliness. That they thus always do not agree is 
no argument against the possible union. Democracy is a 
principle (political, not social), and does not depend upon 
the dress or pursuits or accomplishments of the individual 
professing it. It is a philanthropic and philosophic sys- 
tem of polity, wholly irrespective of personal habits or 
prejudices. It is the government of the people by them- 
selves. Of this great body, the leaders (for the mass can- 
not act as one man, and must delegate duties and assign 
powers) are expected to be in advance, socially and intel- 
lectually, if not also morally and politically of their fel- 
lows, else why leaders ? And we find as matter of his- 
tory, the staunchest advocates of liberal views and free 
government at all times, and especially in the most ex- 
cited times, to have been able men, good patriots and 
gentlemen — to look at Lafayette in France ; Sidney and 
Russell and Hampden in England ; and all of our own 
great Revolutionary characters without exception. Not 
to dilate upon obvious truths, we shall conclude this 
sketch with an extract from the Rights of Man on the abo- 
lition of titles in France, at the framing of their new con- 
stitution — a masterly passage, equal to certain of Burke's 
noblest efforts, and which contains the spirit of the whole 
matter. " Titles are but a nickname, and every nickname 
is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but 
it marks a certain foppery in the human character that 
degrades it. It renders man diminutive in things which 
are little. It talks about its fine riband like a girl, and 
shows its garters like a child. A certain writer of some 



182 LITERARY STUDIES. 

antiquity, says, ' when I was a child, I thought as a child ; 
but when I became a man, 1 put away childish things.' 

" It is properly from the elevated mind of France that 
the folly of titles has been abolished. It has outgrown the 
baby-clothes of Count and Duke, and breeched itself into 
manhood. France has not levelled, it has exalted. It has 
put down the dwarf to set up the man. The insignifi- 
cance of a senseless and noble Duke, Count or Earl has 
ceased to please. Even those who possessed them have 
disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrow the rickets 
have despised the rattle. The genuine mind of man 
thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gew- 
gaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles 
drawn hy the magician's wand, to contract the sphere of nian's 
felicity. He lices immortal within the Bastille of a name, 
and surveys at a distance the envied life of man. 

" Is it then any wonder that titles should fall in France 1 
Is it not a great wonder that they should be kept up any- 
where ? What are they ? What is their worth, nay, 
what is their amount? When we think or speak of a 
judge or general, we associate with it the ideas of office 
and character ; we think of purity in the one and bravery 
in the other ; but when we use a word merely as a title, 
no ideas associate with it. Through all the vocabulary 
of names, there is not such an animal as a Duke or a 
Count ; neither can we connect any certain idea to the 
word. Whether they mean strength or weakness, wisdom 
or folly, a child or a man, or a rider or a horse, is all equi- 
vocal. What respect, then, can be paid to that which de- 
scribes nothing and means nothing ? Imagination has 
fjiven fifjure and character to centaurs, satvrs, and down 



TITLES. 133 

to all the fairy tribe ; but titles baffle even the powers of 
fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript." 

Acute sense, enlivened by antithesis, and condensed into 
the form of pointed maxims, cannot in pungency and effect 
transcend this spirited tirade. Indeed, there are not many 
passages, even in Burke's celebrated Reflections, which 
called forth this reply, that surpass the above episode, in 
compressed power and epigrammatic point. We have 
looked in vain into the journals of the first Congress and 
the secret debates, lately printed, for a discussion on the 
proper title by which to address the President of the United 
States — whether His Excellency, or by what other desig- 
nation.* We looked into this matter at the suggestion of 
one far better fitted than ourselves, from his political 
studies, to resolve this problem. Yet it may be allowed to 
the generous advocate of the poor criminal, the humane 
legislator, to be slightly acquainted with what, at present, 
is no more than a piece of antiquarian curiosity. Human 
life and human improvement is of more consequence than 
titles of honor, and the abolition of capital punishment than 
a matter of form or of courtly address. 

It is to be hoped that beyond the necessary terms of offi- 
cial appellation, titles will never be employed in this 
country, purely as stereotyped honorary epithets or un- 
meaning honors. We want men, not a nobility. We 
would honor greatness and goodness, virtue and talent un- 
titled, far rather than title without either of these claims 
to attention and respect. We require the thing, and not 
the name. If we must have superfluous titles, let them be 
badges of dishonor, and to be avoided by every good man, 
good citizen and true American. 

* Note. — Since writing the above we have been kindly 



134 LITERARY STUDIES. 

referred to the proper volume. In the Journals of the 
Senate for the year '89, the question is discussed, of which 
only a brief minute remains. The debate lasted a week 
or more, during which the titles of Excellency and of His 
Highness, the protector of our Liberties, were proposed, 
but objected to. The latter title was too much Cromwel- 
lian and monarchical perhaps, for even the so-called 
black-cockade federalist. And, finally, the simple and 
appropriate address was resolved on of, the President of 
the United States. 



XV. 



ESSAYES AND CHARACTERES 



PRISON AND PRISONERS 



BY 6EFFRAY MINSHULL, OF GRAYES-INN, GENT. 



The object of this rare treatise, which is rather a collection 
of several short characters and fragmentary disquisitions, 
is to paint Life in Prison, and from the internal evidence it 
affords, no less than the later accounts of Howard, Buxton 
and Mrs. Fry, we dare affirm it to be a very faithful pic- 
ture. Though modern philanthropy has effected much for 
the improvement of prison discipline, and the ameliorated 
condition of prisoners, yet still, in certain prominent par- 
ticulars, a description of a prison more than two centuries 
ago, must answer to a description of the same place, at the 
present day. Dark, gloomy walls, barred windows, guards, 
jailors, locks, confinement, silence, are the outward marks 
of the prison, now as then. To be sure, the buildings are 
better, may be more elegantly constructed, are much 
cleaner, less turbulent ; still a sense of solitude, a feeling 
of closeness, reigns within its precincts. The mere per- 
sonal condition of prisoners is, in many respects, far pre- 



im 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



ferable to what it was once. Yet, in these respects even, 
what great improvements still remain to be discovered and 
applied. But in more important points the system is little 
bettered. The prison chaplain, though (we trust) a differ- 
ent personage from the Newgate ordinary in Fielding's 
time, is still ill paid, and altogether on a wrong footing. 
Intellectual light is virtually excluded from prisons, where 
even freedom of thought might be considered an infringe- 
ment on the rules and restraints of the place. 

In despite of all the works of benevolence, and especially 
of those deeds that tend to prevent the commission of crime, 
it is to be feared prisons must ever be filled. There is 
permanent evil in the world, and certain punishment, ever. 
Misfortune, poverty, vice, blind impulse, it is probable will 
always exist. Earth may never again see an Eden (the 
abode of innocence), till purged from grosser impurities by 
the last penal fires. Out of a world-conflagration only 
may universal peace and purity arise. Hence, we must 
conclude, the co-existence of crime and prisons for ages 
hereafter. 

The prison described in this little volume, is a debtors' 
prison, the King's Bench.* In our State, imprisonment 
for debt is now done away ; a measure fraught with vast 
benefit, but, perhaps, accompanied by certain inevitable 
disadvantages. It is wonderful what enormities were suf- 
fered to be executed, until within a very few years, on this 
class of men, of whom, certainly, a considerable portion 
were innocent men, brought to that condition by the vices, 
or imprudence, or frauds of those, who stood in the relation 



* Then a prison for debtors : how it is now occupied we are not 
informed. 



minshull's prison and prisoners. 137 

of debtors to them. To this suffering, but respectable class 
of men, the author of this treatise (the fruit of personal 
observation and experience) does not appear to belong. 
From what we can gather, he was brought by his impru- 
dence and folly, to become an inhabitant of a prison.* He 
was a gentleman of good family and liberal education, 
who was heartily disgusted by the place, its customs and 
company ; and who earnestly advises all not to borrow, 
and run the chance of coming to the same place. He 
writes with the vigor of a strong character, and with no 
little elevation of sentiment; he is judicious and virtuous, 
with considerable erudition and quaint fancy, bottomed on 
good sense and manly feeling. 

The composition of these essays and characters afforded 
the only occupation their author was willing to assume ; 
and was at once his pleasant task and daily solace. The 
work is of some antiquity ; it was first published in 1618, 
and reprinted twenty years after. The edition before us 
is of 1821, a reprint by the famous Edinburgh publishing 
house of Ballantyne and Co. It is one of a small edition 
of 150 copies, and perhaps there is not a duplicate of the 
work in this country. We think it very probable that 
Sir Walter himself, or one of his antiquarian cronies, 
selected this remarkable tract for republication, and with 
the selfish admiration of a virtuoso, limited the impression 
to enhance its rarity. 

We spoke of this volume as presenting a picture of life 

* A strong proof of family pride, rather misplaced, is evinced in 
the fact of the writer having his crest engraved on the title page. 
The experience the book displays is hardly of that nature a gentle- 
man might be proud to display, even if enamored of his own clever- 
ness as an author. 

7* 



13S LITER ARY STUDIES. 

ill prison : it presents, also, its concomitants. Tlie first 
character is of prisons in general ; then of diiferent sorts 
of prisoners; afterwards, in turn, of the company: of visi- 
toi-s: of the fare and entertainment: of the keepers, the 
jailors, the lockers up ; and concludes with a relation of 
some curious local customs and personal ohservations. 

The intention of the writer is expressed in a sort oi' 
proem to the characters. " My purpose is, with cleare 
water-colours to line me out a heart, yea such a heart, so 
discontented aiul oppressed, tluit I need not be curious in 
fitting every colour to his place, or to chuse the pleasantest 
chamber to draw it in, because in it I am to lay downethe 
bounds o[' tliose tempestuous seas in which ten thousands 
are every day tossed, if not overwhelmed, which is so usual 
here amongst us, that every one is art's master in this 
workmanship ; and every minute something or other is 
still added to this distressed picture, whose {>onderous 
Nveiiijht is so great tliat the frame is scarce able to bear the 
clVigies." The character of a prison we subjoin entire. 
'• A prison is a grave to bury men alive, and a place 
wherein a man. for half a year's experience, may learn 
more law, than he can at Westminster for an hundred 
pounds. It is a microcosmo, a little world o^ woe, it is a 
map of misery, it is a place that will learn a young man 
more villany, if ho be apt to take it, in one half yeare, 
than he can learn at twenty dicing-houses, bowling allies, 
bi*othel houses, or ordinaries ; and an old man, more 
policie than if he had been pupil to Machiavel. It is a 
place that hatii more diseases predominant in it than the 
pest-house in the plague time, and it stinkes more than the 
lord mayor's dog house or Paris garden in August. 

" It is a little commonwealth, althoui^h little wealth be 



minsiiull's prison anjj prisoners. 139 

common tliorc ; it is a desurt vvlicrc desert lyes liood'-viiik- 
ed ; it is a famous citic, wherein are all trades, for here 
lies the alchymist can make ex auro non auruni, tlien ex 
non auro, aurum. 

" It is as intricate a place as Rosamond's Lahyrinth, and 
it is so full of hlindo meanders and cr«ok(MJ turninfrs, that 
it is im})Ossiblo to (iiid the way out, excejjt ho bo directed 
by a silver clue, and can never overcome the minotaure 
without a golden ball to work his owne safely. 

"It is as Innes of Court ; for hr^rciii lawyers inhabit, 
that have crotchets to i'rca other man, yet all their fjuirks 
and quiddities cannot enfranchise themselves. 

"It is the Doctors' Commons, where skilful physitians 
frequent; who, like ^sculapius, can cure men's diseases, 
yet cannot quintessence out of all their vegetals and mine- 
rals, a balsamutn or elixir to make a sovereign i)laster to 
heal the surfeit the mace has given them. 

" It is the Chyrurgions' Hall, where many rare artists 
live, that can search other men's wounds, yet cannot treate 
the wound the serjeant iiath give them. 

" It is your Bankrupt's banquetting-house, where he sits 
feasting with the sweetmeats borrowed from other men's 
tables, having a voluntary disposition never to repay them 
again. 

" It is your Prodigal's uU'unum rcfugium, wherein he 
may see himself as in a glass, what his excess hath 
brought him to; and lest he should surfeit, comes hither 
to physicke himself with moderate diet, and least that his 
bed of downe should breed too many diseases, comes hither 
to change his bed, where he is scarce able to lye downe. 

" It is a purgatory which dotli afllict a man with more 
miseries than ever he reaped pleasures. It is a pilgrim. 



140 LITERARY STUDIES. 

age to exterminate sins and absolve offences ; for here be 
seminaries and masse priests, which doe take down the 
pride of their flesh more than a voyage to the Holy Land 
or a hair shirt in Lent. 

"It is an evil which doth banish a man from all content- 
ments, whein his actions do so terrific him, that it makes a 
man grow desperate. 

" To conclude, what is it not ? In a word, it is the very 
idea of all misery and torment ; it converts joy into sor- 
row, riches into poverty, and ease into discontentments." 

Minshull expends the whole force of his satire on inhu- 
man creditors. His pen on this topic hits the true Juvenal 
strain, yet he willingly excuses the creditor, who employs 
constraint and the strong arm of the law, to obtain his due, 
which he needs to prevent his coming hither himself. 

A choice essay on ' Choice of Company in Prison,' com- 
mences thus : " Wouldst thou learn to dispute well ? Be 
an excellent sophister. Wouldst thou dispute of foreign 
affairs, and be an excellent linguist ? I counsel thee to 
travel. Wouldst thou be of a pleasing and affectionate 
behaviour ? Frequent the court. Wouldst thou dive into 
the secret villanies of man ? Lye in prison." He divides 
all the different varieties of prison companions into three 
sorts. 1. A parasite. 2. A John indifferente. 3. A 
true-hearted Titus : ' the masculine sweetheart.' On vis- 
itors to the prisoners he is pretty hard : ascribing their as- 
sumed condolence to mere curiosity. He is, perhaps, un- 
just in his almost universal censure ; though all prisoners 
are not so fortunate as was Leigh Hunt, who had his wife 
and children, and books, and flowers, and music, and pure 
fancies, and sweet thoughts. This innocent prisoner and 
fine writer had a noble company of visitors : some of them 



minshull's prison and prisoners. 141 

daily companions, Mr. Shelley, Charles Lamb, Tom Moore, 
Horace Smith, Miss Lamb, William Hazlitt, Jeremy Ben- 
tham. A delightful subject for an article, for Hunt himself 
would be a paper on the great and good men, who have 
by any mischance become inmates of a prison : and of the 
admirable books written there. 

In one respect, MinshuU bears some resemblance to 
Cobbett, i. e., in tacking awkward nick-names on the ob- 
jects of his aversion. He speaks, by way of irony, of his 
entertainments and entertainers in prison : the guard at 
the gate is a Cerberus, of whom there is a terrific print on 
the title-page : his ' chamber-fellows' are Threadbare and 
Monilesse : the gardener, Potherb ; the steward, Cut- 
throate ; the cook. Mistress Mutton Chops ; the keeper 
who accompanies the prisoners when they walk without 
the prison, Argus. 

Upon the jailors MinshuU expends all the bitterness, of 
which the humanity of his nature was capable. He rep- 
resents them as devils rather than men, which, indeed, it 
is the tendency of their functions to make them. 

The verses prefixed to the treatise, we think, comprise 
the sum of the matter. 

A prison is a house of care, 

A place where none can thrive, 

A touch-stone true to try a friend, 

A grave for one alive, 

Sometimes a place of right. 

Sometimes a place of wrong, 

Sometimes a place for rogues and thieves, 

And honest men among. 



XVI. 



ON PREACHING 



When we consider the frequency of the occasion, the no- 
bleness of the topics, their supreme importance, the efficacy 
of the act well performed, the genius requisite, the variety 
of congregations, the number of preachers, we are at a 
complete stand to account for the deplorably low state of 
preaching. This confession, extorted from us by the facts 
of the case, may afford matter of astonishment to many 
who are very well satisfied with the present state of the 
pulpit — who ask for nothing better — who perhaps could not 
comprehend anything superior. We have always been 
well pleased at the recollection of that passage in the Spec- 
tator, where Sir Roger de Cuverly's parish clergyman 
being asked who was to preach on the next Sunday for 
him, replied, Doctor South in the morning and Doctor Bar- 
row in the evening — meaning that he intended reading a 
sermon from those great divines on both occasions. We 
heartily wish some of the divines of this day would have 
the courage, as well as the good sense, to adopt a similar 
practice at suitable opportunities. In point of essential 
merit, no critic, any way qualified, would hesitate to give 
the preference to one of South's best sermons over a ma- 
jority of modern discourses even by divines of considerable 



ON PREACHING. 143 

eminence. What pithiness of sense and point of expres- 
sion in the old divines ! What weakness, flaccidity, bald- 
ness, in the present race !* If the excessive length of Bar- 
row, or the local satire of South, or the extravagant erudi- 
tion and overflowing fancy of Taylor, be excepted to, let 
Barrow be condensed, expurgate South, and prune the ex- 
crescences of the Bishop of Down and Connor. Taste, no 
mean talents, judgment, are requisite for the selection and 
purgation, and only to the hands of a first rate man would 
we consign the task. Inferior intellects, if admitted, on the 
plea of piety, into the Church at all, should not pretend to 
this, but take the best sermons as they find them. It is 
not for them to abuse and dislocate the fine thoughts of ge- 
nius, which learning may have overloaded, or temporary 
allusions rendered faint and obscure. It is almost presump- 
tion in a man of equal genius, to try his skill on the same 
subjects that have engaged the attention of those master 
intellects ; for Cowley to attempt a flight with the Theban 
eagle. It is absolute profanation for a petty parson to en- 
deavor to hurl the thunders of avenging justice, or to imi- 
tate the silver eloquence of an Angel of Mercy. 

From the practice of reading the best published sermons 
of standard and orthodox divines, two good results, if no 
more, would follow ; the art of elocution would be much 
more attended to, and the sermons could be studied and 
carefully meditated, by which means the preacher might 
deliver them with greater efiect. We suspect that many 

* To this general deprecation we must make some exceptions : 
the editor of the Churchman, the strongest controversialist in the 
country, who is equally admirable in the graver eloquence of the 
pulpit ; the fine poet Hoyt, who is also a spirited and manly 
preacher; and the fervent declamation of Southard. 



144 LITERARY STUDIES. 

a minister would then understand his theme better than 
now, that he is obliged to write so frequently and at such 
comparatively short notice. 

To this practice the majority of congregations might 
demur, so strong is the hold of ancient usage upon men's 
minds. The curse of political seems to be the predominant 
vice of religious corporations, viz : a blindness to innova- 
tion — even when wholesome reform ; a prejudice in favor 
of existing practices. Many good people appear to suspect 
indolence or indifference on the part of a preacher who 
reads a printed sermon. They call it an imposition. They 
must have a return for the salary. But is a meager dis- 
course from your parson as well worth your attention as a 
sermon from the lips of the English Chrysostoms and Aus- 
tins? As it is, are they all original preachers who deliver 
written sermons ? A sermon may be transferred as well 
as anything else. There are other "conveyances" besides 
those of a legal description. The very critics, who speak 
so authoritatively, are not always acquainted with the 
sources of the finest thoughts and most sparkling fancies. 
When they abuse the preacher's tediousness, they may be 
reflecting upon Tillotson ; and when pleased with a grace- 
ful expression, they may be only assenting to the sentiment 
of Sherlock or Atterbury. 

In no department of literature perhaps (considered as 
such) is a greater decline more manifestly evident than in 
the eloquence of the pulpit. Most of the current spoken 
eloquence is confessedly very vapid, and even tiresome, 
when transferred to paper. Sergeant Talfourd, a man of 
elegant poetic talent, and a popular debater, a very con- 
siderable portion of whose enviable reputation is derived 
from his efforts at the bar and in the House, acknowledges 



ON PREACHING. 145 

the fact in explicit terms in his memoirs of Charles Lamb. 
This declaration, from the pen of the author of Ion, should 
certainly weigh as powerful evidence with those who con- 
sider the transitory impressions a practical and fluent 
speaker can create as incomparably superior to the elabo- 
rate thought and rich fancy of the studious author. There 
are popular speakers, both in the Pulpit and in the Senate, 
whose oratorical art enables them to control or excite the 
passions at will, who yet prudently abstain from publica- 
tion, and thus tacitly confess the decay of the literature of 
eloquence and their inferiority as writers. It is no dis- 
grace for a man to be inferior in one department, merely 
because he is excellent in another. Speaking and writing 
are separate arts, and the distinct merits of each are only 
confounded by those who cannot discriminate, but know 
only how to extol or condemn. The nice shades of dif- 
ference, which constitute this (so real) distinction, are 
perfectly perceptible and unquestionably true. We are 
acquainted with, and have listened to brilliant speakers, 
whose written compositions are below mediocrity, or, at 
best, only on a par with it. But this should not oblige us 
to deny the palpable fact of the great scarcity of good, not 
to say excellent, sermons published nowadays. 

A defect of literary accomplishment, then, among the 
body of the clergy, may be taken as the cause of the infe- 
riority of modern sermons ; style and manner are not 
sufficiently attended to. Art is neglected, and yet pulpit 
eloquence is an art, as much so as political, and a higher 
art, at the same time. Natural eloquence is not enough 
by itself; it must be trimmed and trained by scholarship, 
research, elegance and breeding. To the sacred charac- 
ter of Divine must be appended the no less valuable, 



146 LITERARY STUDIES. 

though less sacred characters of schokir, critic, orator, and 
gentleman. Arrayed in such vestments, the clerical cha- 
racter shines the leading order. Deprived of these acces- 
sory qualities and ornaments, it is likely to be abused and 
degraded. 

The clergv and reli^cious critics of certain denomina- 
tions appear to think just the reverse of this to be the correct 
view. Learning and eloquence, they seem to hold in 
puritanical abhorrence, and to consider the cause of reli- 
gion disgraced by the splendid displays of human genius. 
They oppose taste and piety, and an evangelical spirit, to 
an inventive imagination ; as if for a moment, a man of 
sense could conceive any preference, or even hint at a 
comparison ; sucli parallels are ofiensive, both to religion 
and criticism. Narrow bigots ! ought they not rather to 
regard the highest efforts of intellectual power as the 
truest adoration of the Supreme Being ? To honor or 
glorify that sacred name, — is it not the loftiest occupation of 
humanity ? A hymn to its praise, the sublimest strain of 
poesy ? insomuch that a man can evince no higher ambi- 
tion than that of the great preacher. 

The perfect pulpit-orator should be a saint and an orator 
united ; a Paul, an Augustine, a Jeremy Taylor. No 
years of study, no libraries, no studious pursuits are wasted 
on him whose office it is to minister at the altar. His is 
the highest of all duties — that of Adoration and Prayer : 
to perform these duties with dignity, ignorance is by no 
means the most fitting preparative. 

A consequence of tliis vitiated style of composition is 
seen in the vitiated taste of audiences. They take their 
standard from contemporary preaching (few scholars con- 



ON PREACHING. 147 

stituting modem congregations), and that standard is, too 
often, a low one. 

The spirit of the age, also, hostile to fanciful illustra- 
tion or refined speculation in sacred discourses, and rather 
looking to utilitarian logic, has, we are apt to imagine, 
cast a chilling influence over tlie imagination, and rendered 
the warm and glowing appeals tame and cold. 

Be the causes what they may, however, the fact remains, 
of a very certain declension in the eloquence of the chair 
(as the French term Pulpit Oratory), since the days of the 
old divines. Whether they were a privileged race of men, 
had stronger thoughts, and more capacious heads, or more 
affectionate and philanthropic hearts, we will not attempt 
to determine. That they were far better scholars than 
the present race is confessed ; that they had more poetry 
in them, is granted — and it is also admitted, that their 
poetry did their piety no material injury ; nay, that it 
heightened and refined it. The old English Divines form a 
choice department in a library of old English literature. 
It has been said that a complete library could be formed 
from their works alone, and that, too, a most valuable col- 
lection. For though Divines, they were none the less wits, 
historians, scholars, and moralists. In this respect they 
differ from the French pulpit orators, who were either 
mere declaimers or else scholastic controversialists. The 
English Divines wrote not merely sermons and works of 
scholastic divinity — but they wrote books of moral essays, 
characters, satires; works on life and manners. They 
had wit and humor as well as fancy and sentiment. They 
were not merely the spiritual guides, but also the popular 
writers of the day. They had large capacity of reason 
and richness of imagination. They were picturesque, 



148 LITERARY STUDIES. 

pointed, practical. Not merely line writers, they were 
deep thinkers and acute observers. There is a substance 
and solidity in every one of them tiiat would furnish out a 
score of modern writers with brains. l^arrow alone 
would cut up into a dozen fiishionable lecturers, and Tay- 
lor might serve as a resource for the poets of at least one 
generation. Hall and Donne, as satirists, might send Gif- 
ford and Byron to school to learn their art ; and Earle is 
at least as knowing as William Cobbett. 

In their books we find not only the noblest doctrines of a 
true Christian morality, heightened by pure religion, but 
we also discover profound speculations on human nature, 
and a truer insight into the characters of men. We have 
there preserved for us the truest pictures of that time, and 
the ruling tendencies of that age. 

They were thus not only sciiolars and preachers, but 
also men of the world (in a good sense), and men of re- 
flection. 

As writers, and chietly as writers of sermons, we shall 
consider them, leaving controversy and their individual 
tenets out of the question. The moot points of that day, 
and indeed of every age, interest but very few ; but the 
wholesome doctrines and higii principles these writings 
contain, are good at and in all times. They have good 
thoughts for our times, and noble thouixhts for the best sea- 
sons. To the student, their works are full of thought and 
learning : to the speculatist, they are full o( high aims and 
generous aspirations ; to the atllioted, they contain the 
surest consolation, next to the Scriptures themselves. 

We beg leave to premise, on the very threshold o^ tliese 
criticisms, that we write not for the professional reader, 
who, doubtless, is at least equally well, if not (as he sliould 



ON PKKACHING. 149 

be) niucli bettor iicquaintod than W(! can bo with those old 
writers; but lor tlic general intjuiror, who may b(^ easily 
repelled in liis researches, by unfortunately stumbling on 
the worst scrihblers of that time. At that time, as now, 
there were a large class of bad writers, crude thinkcM-s; 
and such are ever in the majority. Old ICnglish lit(M'atur(5 
may be comparcjd to tin; book-closet in an old-fashioned 
country house, which contains a vast variety of hiarned 
lumber and useless trash ; still, here and there a rare vo- 
lume ; an old manuscript of great value ; a set of books, 
entirely preserved, of some fruitful and popular writer 
years ago. These have all been tumbled in together in 
one medley. Kvcn in many otherwise worthless books lie 
will find a brilliant page or two, or a curious chapter, or 
erudite notes, or a fantastic ap|)(!ndix. The very titles and 
mottoes of some of these curious treatises cannot fail to 
breed some speculation ; the prefacc^s and dedications form 
materials for a literary history of tlu; time. 

If the student has never happened upon these writers 
before, he will bo surprised to find a manly vigor of thought 
and independence of expression in them, of whiph very 
few examples remain at the present day. 

It is to be wondered at the ignorance that exists on this 
subject. Most readers regard all tliat is old as trite, and 
speak of the great body of English divines as dull and 
tiresome. 

A point not sufliciently regarded is the admirable mo- 
rality of these divines ; not only the Christian morality 
(the highest) of their writings, but also the wide and libe- 
ral range of their sympathies as men. They not only taught 
as Christian ministers, but also felt as men and for their 
fellow creatures. There is more humanity in their moral 



150 LITERARY STUDIES. 

toachiiig than in any of the professed books on morality. 
They arc more truly moral than the merely technical 
teachers of morality. Passages even occur in their works 
of a tendency to whicli the strait-laced professors of 
later times migiit object, as free and latitudinarian ; they 
are more compassionate than censorious. Do not these 
objectors forgot, liowever, that tiie severest moralist in 
judging of himself may be, and, indeed, ought to be, the 
most mercitul in his judgment of others ? The true 
Christian is not he who fmds most errors in other sects or 
individuals. Rebuke is not religion, nor captiousness 
Christianity. ''Judge not, that ye be not judged," is a 
cardinal rule of Christian conduct. 

Equally sound and admirable are the old divines in point 
of Christian doctrine. The squeamish churchman need 
never fear to contract any taint of lieresy, or run foul oi 
any disputed and doubtful dogmas in their writings. As 
writers and thinkers, they are above all praise. In the 
language of a tine writer, also a judicious admirer of these 
old worthies: "It is well to moralize with Hall, and raise 
the fancy with the imagination of Taylor ; to raise the 
flame of piety with Herbert, or to be jested into seriousness 
by the points of Fuller." 

The defects of contemporary preaching are two-fold : 
literary and religious. We must premise two conside- 
rations betbre entering upon these }X)ints of criticism. 
Preaching is too general to have any special eflicacy. It 
is directed against vice and sin in the abstract : it enforces 
virtue and goodness in the general. It recognizes passions 
and sentiments, rather than a separate act or an individual 
feeling. It wants particularity. The preacher addresses 
his confjreiration, rather than nnv single member oi' it. 



ON PREACHING. 101 

Perhaps tlierc is no speciality in liis ideas ; ho may him- 
self entertain only general impressions of the beauty of 
holiness or the heinousness of crime. Ilis own soul may 
not be truly alive to the convictions of his reason ; his own 
spirit may not be wholly imbued with his own doctrines. 
As a matter of course, ho can j)roduce no impression, who 
feels no strong motives for exciting any. 

Preaching is also too frequent. It is made too common. 
In the early history of the Churcii, priests, or at least one 
class of them, were allowed to preach only at stated times; 
some, if we are not mistaken, not oftener than once a 
month. This, too, at a time when preaching, as a means 
of making proselytes, was much more essential to the 
growth of the Clmrch than at present. 

The true intent of preaching, the object of a sermon, it 
seems to us, is not comprehended. We are impressed 
with the truth, tliat a preacher should teacli ratlier than 
declaim ; convince tiian speculate ; persuade than exhort, 
and not merely anmse or entertain. His business is to 
teach men doctrine and duty ; but, of tlie two, duty rather 
than doctrine, as practice is more important than opinion. 
He must be himself sincere, if he would gain inllumce ; 
and of his sincerity, a good life is the only test, lie must 
speak from experience, who would speak with authority. 
The mere orator in the pulpit is contemptible. Wfiat au- 
dacity to play olF rhetorical tricks before High Heaven for 
the admiration of a gaping crowd ! At the same time, se- 
verely as we repudiate liollow display, even of the finest 
genius, we yet hold the noblest exercise of the faculties to 
be the worship and adoration of the Almighty Father. To 
his service should tlie richest genius, the costliest research, 



152 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



the most aoconiplisliod talents, bo dedicated ; yet witli hu- 
mility, and all in his honor. 

The pulpit should be the school, the lecture-room, the 
press for the people. How many glean all their scanty 
stock tVom the preacher! Afany take all their religious 
and moral views from their clergyman. This alone should 
incliiu^ us to i\\ the standard of preaching high, to make it 
very comprehensive. 

Of all the varieties of preaching, we place the moral dis- 
course at the head ; that which impresses our highest duties 
and directs our f\\miliar olVices ; that which regards man 
as a social creature, as well as a spiritual being ; that 
which, in its zeal for heavenly things, does not overlook 
the period spent here on this bank and shoal of time ! 
Such preaching is Christian, for it is after the model of the 
Sermon on the Mount — that compend of Christian duties 
and doctrine. Much idle cant has been expemled on a 
distinction between evangelical and moral sermons ; as if 
a gocxl moralist was not, from the philosophical nature of 
the case, religious. Not that morality is better than re- 
ligion. It is as good. It is the same with it. It is Ciiris- 
tianity applied to action. Christianity is, in a word, a 
divine morality. The law o( God and the moral law 
coincide, are contemporary. Morality is not only as old 
as the creation, but existed long before it — before all time 
— in the bosom of the Supreme Being. An awful sense 
of duty governs all beneath the Creator of the world down 
to the meanest of his intelligent and responsible creatures. 
This we woidd have preached. The most sterling of the 
old divines artbrd abundant precedents. The sermons of 
Bari-ow in particular are almost entirely moral treatises. 



ON PREACHING. 153 

Tillotson founds revelation on the law of nature ; and 
speaks of the latter as antecedent to the former. 

Evangelical piety, often pure and sincere, has as often 
been assumed by those who, disregarding the common 
rules of morality, expect from their very wickedness to 
shine out as brilliant lights ;— " the greater sinner, the 
greater saint." Is it harsh to suspect such repentance 
half the time? About strict morality, there can be less 
mistake. It affords ground for fewer deceptions. 

There is another vulgar (though time-honored) error 
regarding the personal character of the priest, which would 
teach us a bad man may still be a good priest ; that the 
office sanctifies the clerical acts of the incumbent. This 
cannot be so. It is too revolting to common reason, let 
the sophisms of controversialists be marshalled as they 
may. For our own part (and we think we share the 
feeling with many) we cannot hear the sermon of a 
preacher, let him be ever so eloquent or acute, if we do 
not reverence his personal character. The two are insepa- 
rable— and of the two, the man should predominate. When 
the man is good and the priest is perfect in his function, 
then we find the true character. The formalist and the 
hypocrite sometimes usurp his place, and in passing we 
will glance at each. The formalist in the pulpit is as 
injurious to the cause of religion as the sceptic in com- 
pany ; perhaps more hurtful, because with less art, and 
without an avowed design. The one disgusts the man of 
sense and sincere Christian ; the other, by specious logic, 
alarms the wary and puts his opponents on their guard. 
We find a passage in Mr. Emerson's Divinity Address so 
germane to the matter, that we cannot forbear quoting 

VOL. II. 8 



164 LITERARY STUDIES. 

" Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then 
is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink 
as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but 
smite and oftend us. We are ftiin to wrap our cloak 
about us, and secure as best we can, a solitude that hears 
not. I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to 
say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, 
where they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the 
temple in the afternoon. A snow-storm was falling around 
us. The snow-storm was real, the preacher merely 
spectral ; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at 
him, and then out of the window behind him into the beau- 
tiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had 
not one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was 
married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or 
chat^rined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none 
the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, 
namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned. 
Not one fact in all his experience had he yet imparted into 
his doctrine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and 
talked, and bought, and aold ; he had read books ; he had 
eaten and drunken ; his head aches ; his heart throbs ; he 
smiles and sutlers ; yet was there not a surmise, a hint in 
all the discourse that he had ever lived at all. Not a line 
did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can 
alwavs be known by this, that he deals out to the people 
his life, — life passed through the fire of thought. But of 
the bad preacher, it could not be told from his sermon, 
what age of the world he fell in ; whether he had a father 
or a child ; whether he was a freeholder or a pauper ; 
whether he was a citizen or a countryman, or any other 
fact of his biography." 



ON PREACHING. 155 

The hypocrite is much worse, and, next to the man of 
cold malicious heart, the worst man in the world. Cant, 
always despicable, in the pulpit is blasphemy. Yet there 
is a cant (if we are not wrong) without hypocrisy ; a pro- 
fessional style of speech, an assumption of using common 
words in a particular and pedantic sense. Such is the 
phrase, " j)rofessing " Christian, a puritanical expression, 
that has become quite common ; a presumptuous term, 
vainglorious, pharisaical. The character of the good 
parson is far removed from either of these. 

From two masterly essays (a little too formally cut, 
perhaps, for the present day) ; the one by an old English 
master, Owen Felltham, and the other, tlie production of 
the prince of French Moralists, Labruy^rc, we select a 
few passages equally striking and true. Owen Felltham, 
in his admirable Resolves, in an essay on Preaching [he 
was a sort of amateur divine himself, and lived in an age 
of the very finest, and also of the most indifferent pulpit 
eloquence, according as you study the works of the very 
first divines, or the merely statistical or chronological dis- 
courses of mere " enumerators," as Labruyere himself 
calls the most tedious class of exhorters], has these just 
thoughts thus curtly and a little pedantically set forth : — 

*' The excess which is in the defect of preaching, has 
made the pulpit slighted ; I mean the much bad oratory 
we find it guilty of. It is a wonder to me, how men can 
preach so little and so long, so long at a time and so little 
matter ; as if they thought to please by the inculcation of 
their vain tautologies. I see no reason, that so high a 
Princess as Divinity is, should be presented to the people 
in the sordid rags of the tongue ; nor that he, which 
speaks from the Father of languages, should deliver his 



156 



LITERARY STUDIES. 



embassage in an ill one. A man can never speak too 
well, where he speaks not too obscure. Long and disi- 
tended clauses are both tedious to the ear and difficult for 
their retaining. A sentence well couched takes both the 
sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope 
speeches that are longer than the memory of man can 
fathom. I see not but that divinity put into apt significants, 
might ravish as well as poetry. 

" The weighty lines men find upon the stage, I am 
persuaded, have been the means to draw away the pulpit's 
followers. We complain of drowsiness at a sermon, when 
a play of a doubled length leads us on still with alacrity. 
But the fault is not all in ourselves. If we saw divinity 
acted, the gesture and variety would as much invigorate. 
But it is too high to be personated by humanity." 

The last sentence recalls to memory the pithy reply of 
Barron, the famous French actor, who, on being asked 
why the stage produced more forcible effects than the 
pulpit, made answer, that they [the actors] represented 
things feigned as if they were real, whereas the divines 
treated the most important themes in such an indifferent 
manner as to appear as if they hardly credited their own 
representations. 

*' At a sermon well dressed, what understanding can 
have a motion to sleep ? Divinity well ordered, casts forth 
a bait which angles the soul into the ear, and how can 
that close when such a guest sits in it ? They are ser- 
mons but of baser metals which lead the eyes to slumber. 
And should we have a continued oration, upon such a 
subject as the stage treats on, in such words as we hear 
some sermons, I am confident it would not only be far 
more tedious, but nauseous and contemptful. The most 



ON PREACHING. 157 

advantage they have of other places is in their good lives 
and actions ; for it is certain Cicero and Roscius are the 

most complete when they both make but one man." 

* * * * 

"I grieve that anything so excellent as divinity is, 
should fall into a sluggish handling. Sure though other 
interposures do eclipse her, yet this is a principal. I never 
yet knew a good tongue that wanted ears to hear it. I 
will honor her in her plain trim ; but I will wish to meet 
in her, graceful jewels, not that they give addition to 
her goodness, but that she is more persuasive in working 
on the soul she meets with. When I meet with worth 
which I cannot over-love, I can well endure that art which 
is a means to heighten liking. Confections that are cordial 
are not the worse, but the better, for being gilded." 

Labruyere, in his admirable chapter of the Pulpit, in his 
famous book of characters and manners of the present age, 
has exhausted the whole topic, with his habitual acuteness 
and profound judgment. We transcribe some of the most 
striking passages, to show what this keen observer and just 
critic thought of the matter. The truths he states are of 
universal application, as fresh now as when they were 
first written — more than a century and a half ago. The 
translation is by Rowe, the dramatist, and extremely well 
done. It preserves the propriety of the thoughts, the 
nicety of the distinctions, and all the point of the original. 
It is, in a word, almost the best prose translation from 
French into English, that we at present remember : — 

" Preaching is nowadays become a mere show ; that 
evangelic gravity, the life of preaching, is absolutely laid 
aside ; an advantageous mien, a pretty tone of voice, ex- 
actness of gesture, choice of expression, and long enume- 



158 LITERARY STUDIES. 

rations, supply its place. To attend seriously on the Dis- 
pensation of the Holy Word is no longer customary, going 
to church is an amusement among a thousand others, and 
preaching a diversion. The preachers play for the prize, 
and the hearers bet upon their heads. * * 

*' Profane eloquence is transferred from the bar, where 
it formerly reigned, to the pulpit, where it never ought to 
come. 

" Oh the vain, unprofitable sermons now-a-days ; the 
time of the Homilies is no more ; the Basils, the Chrysos- 
toms could not restore it ; we should fly into other diocesses 
to get out of the reach of their voices and their familiar 
discourses. The generality of men love fine phrases and 
handsome periods ; admire what they do not understand ; 
fancy themselves to be informed ; content with deciding 
between the first and second doctrine, or between the last 
sermon or the last but one." 

Dr. Eachard, in his admirable book on the contempt of 
the clergy, enumerates most of the vices of bad preach- 
ing. An early Spanish satirist, the author of the history 
of Friar Gerund, has hit off very spirited caricatures of 
the prevalent faults of the clergy of his day — Ciceronians, 
Jesuits, and others ; while Erasmus, with his delicate 
irony, and good Father Latimer, with his old English 
strength and sincerity, have handsomely satirized the lazy 
drones, ignorant monks, and " bells without clappers," 
" dumb dogs," &c., of their age. To give the reader a 
fair taste of the French wit, we transcribe the following 
pithy passages : — 

" The Bishop of Meaux and Father Bourdaloue recall 
to my mind Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them abso- 
lute masters of the eloquence of the pulpit, have had the 



ON PREACHING. 159 

fate of other great models ; one of them has made a great 
many ill censures, the other a great many ill imitators." 

* * sic * 

" A preacher, methinks, ought in every one of his ser- 
mons, to make choice of one principal truth, whether it be 
to move terror or yield instruction, to handle that alone 
largely and fully, omitting all those foreign divisions and 
subdivisions which are so intricate and perplexed. I would 
not have him pre-suppose a thing really false, which is, 
that the great or the genteel men understand the religion 
they profess, and so be afraid to instruct persons of their 
wit and breeding in their catechism ; let him employ the 
long time others are composing a set, formal discourse, in 
making, that the turn and expressions may, of course, flow 
easily from him. Let him, after necessary preparation, 
yield himself up to his own genius, and to the emotions 
with which a great subject will inspire him ; let him spare 
those prodigious efforts of memory which look more like 
reciting for a wager than anything serious, and which 
destroy all graceful action ; let him, on the contrary, by a 
noble enthusiasm dart conviction into the soul and alarm 
the conscience ; let him, in fine, touch the hearts of his 
hearers with another fear than that of seeing him make 
some blunder or halt in his sermon. 

" Let not him who is not yet arrived to such perfection, 
as to forget himself in the dispensation of the holy word ; 
let not him, I say, be discouraged by the austere rules 
prescribed him, as if they robbed him of the means of 
showing his genius and attaining the honors to which he 
aspires. What greater or more noble talent can there be 
than to preach like an Apostle, or which deserves a bish- 
oprick better ? Was Fenelon unworthy of that dignity ? 



160 LITERARY STUDIES. 

Was it possible he should have escaped his Prince's 
choice, but for another choice ?" 

To descend from the epigram of Labruyere to plain 
prose and critical commentary. The style of sermons 
cannot be too plain and simple, in general. The text is 
perfectly clear and earnest. Strength and seriousness are 
the chief qualities. Let it be rather a labored plainness 
than a labored elegance. The greatest truths, like the 
richest gems, show best plain set. The best character, 
for a writer of sermons, is Ben .Tonson's character of 
Cartwright, the Dramatist, who was also a Preacher. 
"He, my son Cartwright, writes all like a man." Joined 
to this manly sense let there be a liberal spirit of humanity, 
a sympathy with men as men ; compassion and fellow, 
feeling. Let suavity modify the rigor of your doctrines, 
and let a Christian feeling overspread your whole spirit. 
Thus we would address the preacher. 

Action and gesture, when natural, are always right — 
when artificial, very seldom. To the youthful student we 
would further say, the old Divines afford a good school, 
but a knowledge of human nature is better. Still, of the 
old Divines drink your fill — of wisdom, and fancy, and 
piety, and acute knowledge, and ability of every kind. 
What pictures, and fair conceits, and rich harmonies, in 
Taylor ! what ingenious thoughts, so fine, so delicate, in 
Donne ! wliat massy arguments in Barrow and Sherlock : 
and lie that reads the contemporaries of these old masters, 
will confess them to have written as with a crisped pen. 



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